It’s a good thing when a man is different from your image of him. It shows he isn’t a type. If he were, it would be the end of him as a man. But if you can’t place him in a category, it means that at least a part of him is what a human being ought to be. He has risen above himself, he has a grain of immortality.

Boris Pasternak - grain of immortality - wist_info

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator
Doctor Zhivago [До́ктор Жива́го], Part 2, ch. 9 “Varykino,” sec. 4 [Yuri] (1955) [tr. Hayward & Harari (1958), US ed.]
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Alternate translations:

It’s a good thing when a man is different from your image of him. It shows he isn’t a type. If he were, it would be the end of him as a man. But if you can’t place him in a category, it means that at least a part of him is what a human being ought to be. He has a grain of immortality.
[tr. Hayward & Harari (1958), UK ed.]

It’s good when a man deceives your expectations, when he doesn’t correspond to the preconceived notion of him. To belong to a type is the end of a man, his condemnation. If he doesn’t fall under any category, if he’s not representative, half of what’s demanded of him is there. He’s free of himself, he has achieved a grain of immortality.
[tr. Pevear & Volokhonsky (2010)]