# Quote — Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

> The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike, and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn't just a fiction, it's part of our physical body, and our souls exists in space and is inside us, like the teeth in the mouth. It can't forever be violated with impunity.

- Author: [Boris Pasternak](https://www.leafyquotes.com/boris-pasternak.md)
- Book: [Doctor Zhivago](https://www.leafyquotes.com/boris-pasternak/doctor-zhivago.md)
- Page: 43
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Boris_Pasternak#Doctor_Zhivago_(1957)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/boris-pasternak/doctor-zhivago/the-great-majority

## More from this book

> My own heart would have concealed it from me, for failure to love is almost like murder and I would have been incapable of inflicting such a blow on anyone.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/boris-pasternak/doctor-zhivago/my-own-heart.md)

> 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...

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/boris-pasternak/doctor-zhivago/and-so-it-turned.md)

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

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/boris-pasternak/doctor-zhivago/gregariousness-is-always.md)