Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
I witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past.
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
Memory
Folds
Memories
Innate
Pleasure
Gathering
Use
Wander
Masterly
Makes
Witness
Harmonies
Past
Supreme
Fold
Harmony
Suspended
Achievement
Wandering
More quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me.
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
Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.
Vladimir Nabokov
Let all of life be an unfettered howl.
Vladimir Nabokov
There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.
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
Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.
Vladimir Nabokov
If he was silent I could be silent too. Indeed, I could very well do with a little rest in this subdued, frightened-to-death rocking chair, before I drove to wherever the beast's lair was - and then pulled the pistol's foreskin back, and then enjoyed the orgasm of the crushed trigger.
Vladimir Nabokov
I should allow only my heart to have imagination and for the rest rely on memory, that long drawn sunset of one's personal truth.
Vladimir Nabokov
The days of my youth, as I look back on them, seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation car.
Vladimir Nabokov
Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish.
Vladimir Nabokov
Stirless, I stand at the window, and in the black bowl of the sky glows like a golden drop of honey the mellow moon
Vladimir Nabokov
The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
Vladimir Nabokov
Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.
Vladimir Nabokov
Why do those people guess so much and shave so little, and are so disdainful of hearing aids?
Vladimir Nabokov
We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.
Vladimir Nabokov
Only talent interests me in paintings and books. Not general ideas, but the individual contribution.
Vladimir Nabokov
But in my arms she was always Lolita.
Vladimir Nabokov
If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.
Vladimir Nabokov
Beauty plus pity -- that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.
Vladimir Nabokov