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Daily Inspiration Quote by Boris Pasternak

"Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us"

About this Quote

Pasternak’s line flatters surprise the way a believer flatters grace: not as a perk, but as the one kind of mercy life still reliably offers. Coming from a Russian novelist who lived through revolution, censorship, and the bureaucratization of everyday existence, “Surprise” reads less like whimsy and more like resistance. In a world where the state, ideology, and even one’s neighbors are trained to predict and police you, the unanticipated becomes a private sanctuary. It’s the moment history fails to fully script the individual.

The phrasing matters. “Greatest gift” implies scarcity and unearnedness; you can’t budget for it, merit it, or claim it as a right. That’s an anti-utopian jab, whether he intended it or not. Grand systems promise certainty: the planned economy, the planned future, the planned soul. Pasternak, writing from inside the century’s loudest promises, elevates the opposite: the crack in the plan. Surprise is where moral life re-enters, because it forces you to respond rather than recite. You find out what you actually value when something interrupts your prepared speech.

There’s also a novelist’s self-portrait embedded here. Fiction depends on surprise not as a cheap twist, but as a revelation that reorganizes meaning. Life’s “gift” is that it can still outwrite us, even when we think we’ve nailed the plot. For Pasternak, that unpredictability isn’t chaos; it’s proof that the human world remains unfinished, and therefore still capable of tenderness, courage, and change.

Quote Details

TopicJoy
Source
Later attribution: Reaching the Pinnacle of Your Emotions (Vincent Carotenuto, 2009) modern compilationISBN: 9780578035178 · ID: 0mH249Lxz6sC
Text match: 95.00%   Provider: Google Books
Evidence:
... Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.” – Boris Pasternak Thoughtfulness Emotion: Thoughtfulness CBE: Love Why you feel like this: 31 Reaching the Pinnacle of Your Emotions.
FeaturedThis quote was our Quote of the Day on February 4, 2026
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Pasternak, Boris. (2026, February 7). Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/surprise-is-the-greatest-gift-which-life-can-7169/

Chicago Style
Pasternak, Boris. "Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us." FixQuotes. February 7, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/surprise-is-the-greatest-gift-which-life-can-7169/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us." FixQuotes, 7 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/surprise-is-the-greatest-gift-which-life-can-7169/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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Surprise as Lifes Greatest Gift - Boris Pasternak
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About the Author

Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak (February 10, 1890 - May 30, 1960) was a Novelist from Russia.

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