Z for Zhivago

This is it!

It is my last post for A to Z Challenge. It is time for letter Z. 

This is the last Monday for the a month long blogging challenge. I still can not believe that I did it!

I will share more about my experience on this month long blogging challenge in my 'reflections' post on 7th May.

As always I will be sharing one book and few of my favorite quotes.

The book that I will be sharing is Doctor Zhivago.

This work by Boris Pasternak is a historical romantic novel first published in 1957. he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1958.

I read this book about 9 years ago. I still remember it for unique romance, emotions and various nicknames.

I did not know much about Russian history at that time and could not understand the controversy about the book. I remember it was very different from all the other books I had read till that time. 

Here are some beautiful quotes from Doctor Zhivago.

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

2. All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.

3. Salvation lies not in the faithfulness to forms, but in the liberation from them.

4. The arbitrariness of the revolutionaries is terrible not because they're villains, but because it's a mechanism out of control, like a machine that's gone off the rails.

5. You are anxious about whether you will rise from the dead or not, but you rose from the dead when you were born and you didn't notice it.

6. What an incorrigible nonentity one must be to play only one role in life, to occupy only one place in society, to always mean one and the same thing!

7. You said that facts are meaningless, unless meanings are put into them. Well, Christianity, the mystery of the individual, is precisely what must be put into the facts to make them meaningful.

8. In a single wave of meaning the triumphant purity of being.

9. The more we love, the more the object of our love seems to us to be a victim. In the case of some men, compassion for a woman exceeds all measure and transports her to an unreal, entirely imaginary world.

10. Now what is history? It is the centuries of systematic explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming death.

11. 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.

12. And then the two basic ideals of modern man- without them he is unthinkable- the idea of free personality and the idea of life as sacrifice.

13. Who does more for a nation--the one who makes a fuss about it or the one who, without thinking of it, raises it to universality by the beauty of his actions, and gives it fame and immortality?

14. For as long as he could remember he had never ceased to wonder why, having arms and legs like everyone else, and a language and way of life common to all, one could be different from the others, liked only by few and, moreover, loved by no one.

15. Now, as never before, it was clear to him that art is always, ceaselessly, occupied with two things. It constantly reflects on death and thereby constantly creates life.

I hope you will like my collection of quotes. 

Please do share your views about this book. Do suggest your favorite books for letter Z. I am looking forward to it.