More Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French.
Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness. "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.
Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses.
Because you took advantage of my disadvantage.
The future is but the obsolete in reverse.
The contemplation of beauty, whether it be a uniquely tinted sunset, a radiant face, or a work of art, makes us glance back unwittingly at our personal past and juxtapose ourselves and our inner being with the utterly unattainable beauty revealed to us.
Let all of life be an unfettered howl.
Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple—these are our faithful timekeepers; and reason corrects the feverish beat.
Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness.
Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!
