Quotes from book
Doctor Zhivago

Name: Doctor Zhivago
Author: Borís Pasternak

Borís PasternakOriginal title Доктор Живаго (Russian, 1957)

Doctor Zhivago is a novel by Boris Pasternak, first published in 1957 in Italy. The novel is named after its protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a physician and poet, and takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and World War II.

“I love you wildly, insanely, infinitely.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Variant: I love you madly, irrationally, infinitely.
Source: Doctor Zhivago (1957)

“You and I, it's as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

“Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people's songs.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

“Gregariousness is always the refuge of mediocrities, whether they swear by Solovyov or Kant or Marx. Only individuals seek the truth.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Doctor Zhivago (1957)

“If it is so painful to love and to be charged with this electric current, how much more painful must it be to a woman and to be the current, and to inspire love.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago (1957)

“She was here on earth to make sense of its wild enchantments.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

“I don't think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

“And remember: you must never, under any circumstances, despair. To hope and to act, these are our duties in misfortune.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

“How wonderful to be alive," he thought. "But why does it always hurt?”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Doctor Zhivago (1957)
Source: El doctor Zhivago

“He is her glory. Any woman could say it. For every one of them, God is in her child. Mothers of great men must have been familiar with this feeling, but then, all women are mothers of great men -- it isn't their fault if life disappoints them later.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

“But the division in him was a sorrow and a torment, and he became accustomed to it only as one gets used to an unhealed and frequently reopened wound.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

“I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Variant: I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.
Source: Doctor Zhivago

“Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

“Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don't love it sufficiently”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

“I hate everything you say, but not enough to kill you for it.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

“To be a woman is a great adventure;
To drive men mad is a heroic thing.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

“Farewell, my great one, my own, farewell, my pride, farewell, my swift, deep, dear river, how I loved your daylong splashing, how I loved to plunge into your cold waves.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

“I have the impression that if he didn't complicate his life so needlessly, he would die of boredom.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

“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 be a victim.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

“And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness…”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

И вот оказалось, что только жизнь, похожая на жизнь окружающих и среди нее бесследно тонущая, есть жизнь настоящая, что счастье обособленное не есть счастье...
As quoted in The Reporter, Volume 19, 1958
Doctor Zhivago (1957)