Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The only real number is one, the rest are mere repetition
Vladimir Nabokov
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Vladimir Nabokov
Age: 77 †
Born: 1899
Born: January 1
Died: 1977
Died: January 1
Autobiographer
Chess Composer
Chess Player
Journalist
Lepidopterist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
St. Petersburg
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Vladimir Sirin
Vl. Sirin
Wladimir Nabokoff-Sirin
V. Sirin
Real
Repetition
Mere
Number
Rest
Numbers
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust
Vladimir Nabokov
I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.
Vladimir Nabokov
Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.
Vladimir Nabokov
The spiral is a spiritualized circle. In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled, has ceased to be vicious it has been set free.
Vladimir Nabokov
Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.
Vladimir Nabokov
Here lies the sense of literary creation to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in kindly mirrors of future times. . . . To find in objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern . . .
Vladimir Nabokov
There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.
Vladimir Nabokov
I have no ear for music. When I attend a concert, I endeavor gamely to follow the sequence and relationship of sounds but cannot keep it up for more than a few minutes. Visual impressions, reflections of hands in lacquered wood, a diligent bald spot over a fiddle, take over, and soon I am bored beyond measure by the motions of the musicians.
Vladimir Nabokov
It is nothing but a kind of a microcosmos of communism - all that psychiatry', rumbled Pnin ... 'Why not leave their private sorrow to people? Is sorrow not, one asks, the only thing in the world people really possess?
Vladimir Nabokov
Even while writing his book, he had become painfully aware how little he knew his own planet while attempting to piece together another one from jagged bits filched from deranged brains.
Vladimir Nabokov
Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much.
Vladimir Nabokov
A creative writer must study carefully the works of his rivals, including the Almighty. He must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world. In order to do this adequately, avoiding duplication of labor, the artist should know the given world.
Vladimir Nabokov
A cluster of stars palely glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own.
Vladimir Nabokov
Solitude is the playfield of Satan.
Vladimir Nabokov
An active and creative reader is a re-reader.
Vladimir Nabokov
And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine.
Vladimir Nabokov
Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?
Vladimir Nabokov
And I want to rise up, throw my arms open for a vast embrace, address an ample, luminous discourse to the invisible crowds. I would start like this: O rainbow-colored gods. . .
Vladimir Nabokov
Memory overshadows the present and dims the future into something thicker than its usual pea soup.
Vladimir Nabokov
Beauty plus pity -- that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.
Vladimir Nabokov
