Boris Pasternak Quotes

Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. It is strange that these voices often contradict each other?

In suffocating the voice of conscience, passion carries with itself a restlessness of the body and the senses: it is the restlessness of the "external man." When the internal man has been reduced to silence, then passion, once it has been given freedom of action, so to speak, exhibits itself as an insistent tendency to satisfy the senses and the body.

For this was the round of love: fear which leads on desire, tenderness and fury, and that brutal anguish which triumphantly follows pleasure.

Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs; being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes; being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears; what is it else? A madness most discreet, a choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

Conscience whispers, but interest screams aloud.

It's no longer a warmth hidden in my veins: it's Venus entire and whole fastening on her prey.

Guilt is present in the very hesitation, even though the deed be not committed.

Conscience and covetousness are never to be reconciled; like fire and water they always destroy each other, according to the predominancy of the element.

Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.

Any time the character is in a moral quandary is interesting. That's been true from the Greeks on down.

You know, I'm cursed with morals. I was raised a certain way. I wish I wasn't. I wish I was raised by wolves.

A portion of mankind take pride in their vices and pursue their purpose; many more waver between doing what is right and complying with what is wrong.

No one can actually define love, but you attempt to, and the closest you can get is longing. And that itself has a melancholy to it. You can say dread, or doom - it's that feeling we all feel when we fall in love with someone: we have this horrible, fearful feeling that maybe we will never have that person in our life.

Look, I do spray flies, but I have a really big conscience.

Somewhere between fear and sex passion is.

Temptation is a suggested short cut to the realization of the highest at which I aim - not towards what I understand as evil, but towards what I understand as good.

He was in my hair, my eyes, my fingers, my heart. I day-dreamed about what he was doing, thinking, seeing, smelling, feeling. I could not eat for thoughts of him.

I want you bad like a natural disaster. You are all I see. You are the only one I want to know.

Love, however, cannot be forbidden. The more that flame is covered up, the hotter it burns. Also love can always find a way. It was impossible that these two whose hearts were on fire should be kept apart. (Pyramus and Thisbe)

Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.

For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble.

Oh, Conscience! Conscience! man's most faithful friend, Him canst thou comfort, ease, relieve, defend; But if he will thy friendly checks forego, Thou art, oh! woe for me, his deadliest foe!

Passionate love is a quenchless thirst.

He’d spent his life being a perfect gentleman. He’d never been a flirt. He’d never been a rogue. He hated being the center of attention, but by God, he wanted to be the center of her attention. He wanted to do the wrong thing, the bad thing. He wanted to pull her into his arms and carry her to her bed. He wanted to peel every last inch of her clothing from her body, and then he wanted to worship her. He wanted to show her all the things he wasn’t sure he knew how to say.