Lara: Wouldn't it have been lovely if we'd met before?

Zhivago: Before we did? Yes.

Lara: We'd have got married, had a house and children. If we'd had children, Yuri, would you like a boy or girl?

Zhivago: I think we may go mad if we think about all that.

Lara: I shall always think about it.
Komarovski: [Contemptuously] Who are you to refuse my sugar? Who are you to refuse me anything?
Komarovski: Lara, I am determined to save you from a dreadful error. There are two kinds of men, and only two, and that young man is one kind. He is high-minded. He is pure. He is the kind of man that the world pretends to look up to and in fact despises. He is the kind of man who breeds unhappiness; particularly in women. Now, do you understand?

Lara: No.

Komarovski: I think you do. There's another kind. Not high-minded. Not pure. But alive. Now that your taste at this time should incline towards the juvenile is understandable. But for you to marry that boy would be a disaster. Because there's two kinds of women...

[Lara covers her ears, he forces her arms down]

Komarovski: There are two kinds of women and you - as we well know - are not the first kind.

[Lara slaps him, he slaps her back]

Komarovski: You, my dear, are a slut.

Lara: I am not!

Komarovski: We'll see.
Engineer: If they were to give me two more excavators, I'd be a year ahead of the plan by now.

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: You're an impatient generation.

Engineer: Weren't you?

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: Yes, we were, very. Oh, don't be so impatient, Comrade Engineer. We've come very far, very fast.

Engineer: Yes, I know that, Comrade General.

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: Yes, but do you know what it cost? There were children in those days who lived off human flesh. Did you know that?
[repeated line]

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: How did you come to be lost?
[last lines]

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: Tonya! Can you play the balalaika?

David: Can she play? She's an artist!

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: Who taught you?

David: Nobody taught her!

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: Ah... then it's a gift.
Gromeko: Good marriages are made in heaven... or some such place.
Gromeko: What I want to know is how we're going to stay alive this winter.
Pasha: They rode them down, Lara. Women and children, begging for bread. There will be no more 'peaceful' demonstrations.
Zhivago: What happens to a girl like that, when a man like you is finished with her?

Komarovski: You interested?

Zhivago: You shouldn't smoke. You've had a shock.

[he pulls the cigar from Viktor's mouth, tosses it into the toilet]

Komarovski: I give her to you, Yuri Andreevich. Wedding present.
Komarovski: [speaking to Lara of Pasha] He's a very fine young man. That's obvious.
Unknown: The doctor's a gentleman.

The Bolshevik: Right! It's written all over him.

Unknown: He's a good man.

The Bolshevik: God rot good men.

[Lara silently stares in loathing at the Bolshevik]
Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: I told myself it was beneath my dignity to arrest a man for pilfering firewood. But nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man, and the party was right: One man desperate for a bit of fuel is pathetic. Five million people desperate for fuel will destroy a city. That was the first time I ever saw my brother. But I knew him. And I knew that I would disobey the party. Perhaps it was the tie of blood between us, but I doubt it. We were only half tied anyway, and brothers will betray a brother. Indeed, as a policeman, I would say, get hold of a man's brother and you're halfway home. Nor was it admiration for a better man than me. I did admire him, but I didn't think he was a better man. Besides, I've executed better men than me with a small pistol. I told them who I was: The old man was hostile, the girl cautious, my brother... seemed very pleased. I think the girl was only one who guessed at their position.
Zhivago: [to Yevgraf] You lay life on a table and cut out all the tumors of injustice. Marvelous. Ah, but cutting out the tumours of injustice, that's a deep operation. Someone must keep life alive while you do it. By living. Isn't that right?
Komarovski: Yuri Andreiivich, you've changed. Larisa - remarkably the same.
Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: [narrating; on World War I] By the second winter, the boots had worn out... but the line still held. Even Comrade Lenin underestimated both the anguish of that 900-mile long front... as well our own cursed capacity for suffering. Half the men went into action without any arms... irregular rations... led by officers they didn't trust.

Officer: [to soldiers] Come on, you bastards!

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: And those they did trust...

Pasha: [leaps out of the trench and begins leading his men in a charge] Come on, Comrades! Forward, comrades! Earth-shakers!

[an artillery shell explodes in front of him; he falls to the ground, and the soldiers retreat to their trench]

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: Finally, when they could stand it no longer, they began doing what every army dreams of doing...

[the soldiers begin to leave their trenches]

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: They began to go home. That was the beginning of the Revolution.
Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: [narrating over a military parade in Moscow] In bourgeois terms, it was a war between the Allies and Germany. In Bolshevik terms, it was a war between the Allied and German upper classes - and which of them won was of total indifference. My task was to organize defeat, so as to hasten the onset of revolution. I enlisted under the name of Petrov. The party looked to the peasant conscript soldiers - many of whom were wearing their first real pair of boots. When the boots had worn out, they'd be ready to listen. When the time came, I was able to take three whole battalions out of the front lines with me - the best day's work I ever did. But for now, there was nothing to be done. There were too many volunteers. Most of it was mere hysteria.
Pasha: I used to admire your poetry.

Zhivago: Thank you.

Pasha: I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections... it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree; you're wrong. The personal life is dead in Russia. History has killed it. I can see why you might hate me.

Zhivago: I hate everything you say, but not enough to kill you for it.
Pasha: The private life is dead - for a man with any manhood.

Zhivago: I saw some of your 'manhood' on the way at a place called Minsk.

Pasha: They were selling horses to the Whites.

Zhivago: It seems you've burnt the wrong village.

Pasha: They always say that, and what does it matter? A village betrays us, a village is burned. The point's made.

Zhivago: Your point - their village.
Kostoyed Amourski: I'm a FREE man.

[He rattles the chains that mark him as slave labor]

Kostoyed Amourski: . I am the only free man on this train! The rest of you are CATTLE!
Liberius: Comrade Doctor, I need a medical officer.

Zhivago: I'm sorry, I have a wife and child in Varykino.

Razin, Liberius' Lieutenant: ...and a mistress in Yuriatin.

Liberius: [laughs] Comrade Medical Officer, we are Red partisans, and we SHOOT deserters!
Liberius: [looking at the bodies of slain White soldiers, whom he was found to be teenagers] St. Michael's Military School?

[finds their instructor's body]

Liberius: You old bastard!
Razin, Liberius' Lieutenant: [Zhivago is trying to aide a wounded White soldier] It does not matter!

Zhivago: Have you ever loved a woman, Razin?

Razin, Liberius' Lieutenant: I once had a wife and four children.
Liberius: [Liberius and Razin are debating whether or not to allow Zhivago's release] I command this unit!

Razin, Liberius' Lieutenant: We command jointly! The Party Bulletin expressly states...

Liberius: Bah!

[knocks bulletin out of Razin's hands]

Liberius: I could have you taken out and shot!

Razin, Liberius' Lieutenant: And could you have The Party taken out and shot? Understand this: as the military struggle draws to a close, the political struggle intensifies. In the hour of victory, the military will have served its purpose - and all men will be judged POLITICALLY - regardless of their military record! Meanwhile, there are still White units in this area - the Doctor stays.
Gromeko: [Aghast while reading newspaper] They've shot the Czar. And all his family.

[crumples newspaper]

Gromeko: Oh, that's a savage deed. What's it for?

Zhivago: It's to show there's no going back.
Tonya: Yuri, there's an extraordinary girl at this party.

Zhivago: I know. I'm dancing with her.
Anna: But, Boris, this is genius.

Medical Professor: Really? I thought it was Rachmaninoff. I'm going for a smoke.
Komarovski: [to Lara] And don't delude yourself that this was rape! That would flatter us both!
Zhivago: [to the local commissar after examining an old sickly man] It isn't typhus. It's another disease we don't have in Moscow... starvation.
Pasha: [to Yuri] The personal life is dead in Russia. History has killed it.
Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: [on Lara's last years] She'd come to Moscow to look for her child. I helped her as best I could, but I knew it was hopeless. I think I was a little in love with her. One day she went away and didn't come back. She died or vanished somewhere, in one of the labor camps. A nameless number on a list that was afterwards mislaid. That was quite common in those days.
Komarovski: No doubt they'll sing in tune after the revolution.
Zhivago: You have no right whatever on me from work.

Delegate: As a soviet deputy I...

Zhivago: That gives you the power, not the right.
Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: [narrates] He was walking about with a noose round his neck and didn't know. So I told him what I'd heard about his poems.

Zhivago: Not... liked? Not liked by whom? Why not liked?

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: [narrates] So I told him that

Zhivago: Do you think it's personal, petit-bourgeoise and self-indulgent?

[Yevgraf nods]

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: [narrates] I lied. But he believed me.
Engineer: We admire your brother very much.

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: Yes. Everybody seems to, now.

Engineer: Well, we couldn't admire him when we weren't allowed to read him...

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: No.
Komarovski: Your rarified selfishness is intolerable. Larissa's in danger too.

Zhivago: By association with me?

Komarovski: No, not by association with you; you're small fry. By association with Strelnikov.

Lara: I've never met Strelnikov.

Komarovski: You're married to Strelnikov! They know that.

Lara: I was married to Pasha Antipov.

Komarovski: I understand, I understand. But they don't.
Komarovski: [drunk] We're all made of the same clay, you know! Clay! Claaaaay!
Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: This man was your father. Why won't you believe it? Don't you want to believe it?

The Girl: Not if it isn't true.

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: That's inherited.
Komarovski: Strelnikov is dead.

Zhivago: What?

Komarovski: Spare me your expressions of regret. He was a murderous neurotic of no use to anyone. Do you see how this affects Larissa? You don't. You're a fool. She's Strelnikov's wife. Why do you think they haven't arrested her - is this the usual practice? Why do you think they had her watched at Yuriatin? They were waiting for Strelnikov.

Zhivago: If they thought Strelnikov would come running to his wife, they didn't know him...

Komarovski: They knew him well enough. He was only five miles from here when they caught him. He was arrested on the open road. He didn't conceal his identity - indeed throughout the interview he insisted they call him Pavel Antipov, which is his right name, and refused to answer to the name Strelnikov. On his way to execution, he took a pistol from one of the guards and blew his own brains out.

Zhivago: Oh my God... don't tell Lara this.

Komarovski: I think I know Lara at least as well as you. But don't you see how this affects her position? She's served her purpose. These men that came with me today as an escort will come for her and the child tomorrow as a firing squad! Now, I know exactly what you think of me, and why, but if you're not coming with me she's not coming with me! So, are you coming with me? Do you accept the protection of this ignoble Caliban on any terms that Caliban cares to make... or is your delicacy so exorbitant that you would sacrifice a woman and a child to it?
Komarovski: Pavel Pavlovich. My chief impression - and I mean no offence - is that you're very young.

Pasha: Monsieur Komarovsky. I hope I don't offend you. Do people improve with age?

Komarovski: They grow a little more tolerant.

Pasha: Because they have more to tolerate in themselves. If people don't marry young, what do they bring to their marriage?

Komarovski: A little experience.
Lara: You know, you often look at me as if you knew me.

Zhivago: I have seen you before. Four years ago. Christmas Eve.

Lara: Were you there? No wonder you look at me. Did you know Viktor Komarovsky?

Zhivago: Yes I did. That young man who took you away...

Lara: My husband.

Zhivago: Lot of courage. He made the rest of us look very feeble. As a matter of fact, I thought you both did. Good man to shoot at.

Lara: I'd give anything never to have met him.
The Girl: I'm not your niece, Comrade General.

Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: Well, I'm nobody's idea of an uncle. But if this man were my father, I should want to know.
Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago: But if people love poetry, they love poets. And nobody loves poetry like a Russian.
Zhivago: It's the tsar.

Katya: The tsar was an enemy of the people.

Zhivago: Well, he didn't know he was an enemy of the people, you know.

Lara: Well, he should have known, shouldn't he?

Doctor Zhivago Quotes

Extended Reading

Doctor Zhivago short comments

Kaia 2022-01-03 08:01:22

In fact, it's not that the movie is really bad, but the relative distance from the original is too big.
Demetris 2022-03-27 09:01:09

8/10. After the intermission, the black screen lasted for a minute, and when the whistle blew out of the hole, it suddenly became bright. The train went forward carrying the revolution that wiped out all meaning of life, but love happened quietly, just like Zhivago and Lana after breaking up and returning to the house, the prospect faded. The chrysanthemums, like a little candlelight from a cold frosty window, illuminate the poet's heart. The wild flowers and silver-covered beauty embody the fascination and harshness of Russian life. David Lean's visual language demonstrates his ability to control narrative: Parcy's revolutionary leaflets were just confiscated by the police, and he immediately took out a stack from his pocket and distributed it to the surrounding workers, showing his fearless spirit of rebellion; Lana and Zhiva After the dance, Ge threw directly to the scene of the two eating, and the singing of the parade was heard outside. Lana's boyfriend Passy was in the parade, and the atmosphere was tense, paving the way for the follow-up development of the relationship between the characters; Passy was hit by a cannonball while charging, only through a drop. The glasses that fell, implicitly explained that his thoughts began to turn cold. After the mother's burial, the wind whistling in the woods, the moonlight outside the hole in the stuffy tanker, the bad news of the wife's imprisonment accompanied by the falling of the grand piano, and the illegitimate daughter at the end to switch between the dam and the rainbow.