Dr Zhivago Quotes

“But who are we, where do we come from
When all those years
Nothing but idle talk is left
And we are nowhere in the world?"
= MEETING =”
― Boris Pasternak, The Poems of Doctor Zhivago.

“Only the familiar transformed by genius is truly great.”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“My unforgettable delight! As long as the crooks of my arms remember you, as long as you're still on my hands and lips, I'll be with you. I'll shed tears about you in something worthy, abiding. I'll write down my memory of you in a tender, tender, achingly sorrowful portrayal. I'll stay here until I've done it. And then I'll leave myself. This is how I'll portray you. I'll set your features on paper, as, after a terrible storm that churns the sea to its bottom, the traces of the strongest, farthest-reaching wave lie on the sand. In a broken, meandering line the sea heaps up pumice stones, bits of cork, shells, seaweed, the lightest, most weightless things it could from the bottom. This is the line of the highest tide stretching endlessly along the shore. So the storm of life cast you up to me, my pride. And so I will portray you.”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“A constant, systematic dissembling is required of the vast majority of us. It’s impossible, without its affecting your health, to show yourself day after day contrary to what you feel, to lay yourself out for what you don’t love, to rejoice over what brings you misfortune. Our nervous system is not an empty sound, not a fiction. It’s a physical body made up of fibers. Our soul takes up room in space and sits inside us like the teeth in our mouth. It cannot be endlessly violated with impunity. It was painful for me to hear you tell about your exile, Innokenty, how you grew during it, and how it re-educated you. It's as if a horse were to tell how it broke itself in riding school.”
― Boris Pasternak, Dr Zhivago

“Farewell, my great and dear one, farewell, my pride, farewell, my swift, deep river, how I loved your daylong splashing, how I loved to throw myself into your cold waves.”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“The kingdom of plants so easily offers itself as the nearest neighbor to the kingdom of death. Here, in the earth's greenery, among the trees of the cemetery, amidst the sprouting flowers rising up from the beds, are perhaps concentrated the mysteries of of transformation and and the riddles of life that we puzzle over. Mary at first did not recognize Jesus coming from the tomb and took him for the gardener walking in the cemetery.”
― Boris Pasternak, Dr Zhivago