Boris Pasternak

What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.

What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.

A candle burned on the table, a candle burned ... he whispered to himself — the beginning of something confused, formless; he hoped that it would take shape of itself. But nothing more came to him.

No deep and strong feeling, such as we may come across here and there in the world, is unmixed with compassion. The more we love, the more the object of our love seems to us to be a victim.

It is no longer possible for lyric poetry to express the immensity of our experience. Life has grown too cumbersome, too complicated. We have acquired values which are best expressed in prose.

Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel.

Even so, one step from my grave,
I believe that cruelty, spite,
The powers of darkness will in time
Be crushed by the spirit of light.