Inscription placed by his orders on the Gates of the Cemeteries in 1794; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Don't sleep, don't sleep, artist,
Don't give in to sleep.
You are eternity's hostage
A captive of time.”
Poem "Night" (Ночь), from When the Weather Clears (Kogda razgulyaetsya, 1957) — as quoted in One Less Hope: Essays on Twentieth-century Russian Poets (2006) by Constantin V. Ponomareff, p. 130
Original
Не спи, не спи, художник, Не предавайся сну. Ты – вечности заложник У времени в плену.
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Borís Pasternak 40
Russian writer 1890–1960Related quotes
“Death is not "an eternal sleep!"”
Citizens! efface from the tomb that motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all nature a funereal crape, takes from oppressed innocence its support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death! Inscribe rather thereon these words: "Death is the commencement of immortality!"
Source: Last speech to the National Convention http://www.bartleby.com/268/7/24.html (26 July 1794)
“Employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think.”
Source: Utopia of Usurers (1917), p. 31
The Rambler, No. 78 (Sat 15 Dec 1750). http://www.yalejohnson.com/frontend/sda_viewer?n=106855 See also The Yale Book of Quotations, Samuel Johnson 2 (2006)
Interview with Rock Guitar Player Magazine, 2003.
“…; but conscience, like a child, is soon lulled to sleep; and habit is our idea of eternity.”
Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)
“There is a time for many words and there is a time also for sleep.”
XI. 379 (tr. A. T. Murray).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
Source: The Odyssey
Source: Either/Or: A Fragment of Life