Quote

Religion has the same relation to man's heavenly condition that mathematics has to his earthly one: both the one and the other are merely the rules of the game. Belief in God and belief in numbers: local truth and truth of location.

Vladimir Nabokov

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Games
Mathematics
Religion
Relation
Truth
Merely
Earthly
Men
Rules
Location
Conditions
Locals
Numbers
Local
Game
Heavenly
Belief
Condition

More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov

Image
Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss Poems that take a thousand years to die But ape the immortality of this Red label on a little butterfly .
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
My own ultraviolet darling. Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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
Image
Caress the detail, the divine detail.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
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
Image
I don't belong to any club or group. I don't fish, cook, dance, endorse books, sign books, co-sign declarations, eat oysters, get drunk, go to church, go to analysts, or take part in demonstrations.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
I cannot conceive how anybody in his right mind should go to a psychoanalyst.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life's full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Do those clowns really believe what they teach?
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Pnin slowly walked under solemn pines. The sky was dying. He did not believe in an autocratic God. He did believe, dimly, in a democracy of ghosts. The souls of the dead, perhaps, formed committees, and these, in continuous session, attended the destinies of the quick.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
And presently I was driving through the drizzle of the dying day, with the windshield wipers in full action but unable to cope with my tears.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Remembrance, like Rembrandt, is dark but festive. Remembered ones dress up for the occasion and sit still. Memory is a photo-studio de luxe on an infinite Fifth Power Avenue.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
She was like Marat only with nobody to kill her.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Oh, let me be mawkish for the nonce! I am so tired of being cynical.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
We think not in words but in shadows of words.
Vladimir Nabokov
Image
Imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art, the child's scrawl on the fence, and the crank's message in the market place. Art is never simple.
Vladimir Nabokov