“‘Of course one does meet brilliant men’, said Nikolay, ‘but they are isolated. The fashion nowadays is all for groups and societes of every sort. -It is always a sign of mediocrity in people when they herd together, wether their group loyalty is to Solovyev or to Kant or Marx. The truth is only sought by individuals, and they break with those who do not love it enough.”
“Oh, how one wishes sometimes to escape from the meaningless dullness of human eloquence, from all those sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the worldlessness of long, grinding labor, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion!”
Boris Pasternak
Doctor Zhivago – 1957
Read More“And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is geniune life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness… And this was most vexing of all.”