"It´s a good thing when a man is different from your image of him. Is shows he isn´t a type. If he were, it would be the end of him as a man. But if you can´t place him in a category, it means that at least a part of him is what a human being ought to be. He has risen above himself, he has a grain of immortality."

6 likes

Source: Boris Pasternak, “Winter Night”

About the author

Boris Pasternak

Poet, Novelist

Boris Pasternak was a Russian poet and novelist, best known for his novel Doctor Zhivago, which explores themes of love and freedom against a backdrop of revolution.

All quotes by Boris Pasternak →

Same author

More quotes by Boris Pasternak

See all →
Boris Pasternak Poet, Novelist

"Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary."

Read quote
Boris Pasternak Poet, Novelist

"What is history? Its beginning is that of the centuries of systematic work devoted to the solution of the enigma of death, so that death itself may eventually be overcome. That is why people write symphonies, and why they discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves."

Read quote
Boris Pasternak Poet, Novelist

"The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman."

Read quote