Vladimir Nabokov Quotes

The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.

Vladimir Nabokov

• Translations
• Prettiest
• Paraphrase

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• If you go back to all my albums, they're all confessional.

  

  Yoko Ono
  • You
  • Back
  • Go

• When you play guard, you're not going to block a lot of shots. Inside, you're going to block shots.

  

  Oscar Robertson
  • You
  • Play
  • Inside

• When I was very small, maybe 8 years old, we had a big radio that stood on four legs, and it had a cross piece underneath it, and I used to take a pillow and crawl under the radio.

  

  Vin Scully
  • Small
  • Old
  • Pillow

• Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.

  

  Arthur Miller
  • People
  • Mind
  • Society

• You can road-test relationships.

  

  Joel Edgerton
  • Road

• The majority of people call or message me because they need something or they want something. You never know what people's intentions are.

  

  Lilly Singh
  • People

• The Governor's Office is going to get out of the litigation business.

  

  Doug Ducey
  • Business

• I'm really excited to share cabaret, the art form, not just with the generations that are above me, but also my generation and the generation under me. I think it's an art form that's incredibly important, and I think that my generation is a little unfamiliar with it.

  

  Annaleigh Ashford
  • Important
  • Art

• At this year's Open, I'll have five boyfriends.

  

  Anna Kournikova

• Say you can't put one foot in front of the other, you punch like a child, and you're not flexible at all. We'll show you some aikido, some ground jujitsu, some gun stuff, some knife moves. We can make a pretty good-size dent with that.

  

  Chad Stahelski
  • Good
  • Pretty
  • Gun

• People want the right to die at a time of their own choosing. Too many families have watched helplessly as a relative dies slowly, longing for death.

  

  Polly Toynbee
  • People
  • Time
  • Death

• At an individual level just as much as a corporate level, this notion of if you're not really passionate about the work you're doing in a world of mounting pressure, you're going to experience more and more stress. You're going to burn out. You're going to become marginalized.

  

  John Hagel III
  • World
  • Work
  • Experience

• I've worked with a lot of wooden actors in my day, but Pinocchio is the best.

  

  Martin Landau

• After Huguette Clark died in 2011 at age 104, 19 relatives challenged her will, claiming she was mentally ill and had been defrauded by her nurse, attorney and accountant.

  

  Bill Dedman
  • She
  • Age
  • Nurse

• Pell Grants are, and have been, critically important tools in making higher education a possibility for lower- and middle-income students.

  

  Christopher Dodd
  • Important
  • Education

• Did you think the lion was sleeping because he didn't roar?

  

  Friedrich Schiller
  • Lion

• I'm optimistic. I see no longer people accepting fuzzy thinking in the world. The change is not that people aren't still saying under-informed things. The change is that if you're in power and you say something under-informed, there are people out there with a voice who will take you to task for having done so.

  

  Neil deGrasse Tyson
  • People
  • World
  • Thinking

• I apply the three gag rule, which is if I can read a script without gagging more than three times, then maybe I can say yes to this job.

  

  Peter Riegert
  • Job

• The town of GUILDFORD, which (taken with its environs) I, who have seen so many, many towns, think the prettiest, and, taken all together, the most agreeable and most happy-looking, that I ever saw in my life.

  

  William Cobbett
  • Thinking
  • Together
  • Taken

• When I was young I once found a book in a Dutch translation, 'The leaves of Grass'. It was the first time a book touched me by its feeling of freedom and open spaces, the way the poet spoke of the ocean by describing a drop of water in his hand. Walt Whitman was offering the world an open hand (now we call it democracy) and my 'Monument for Walt Whitman' became this open hand with mirrors, so you can see inside yourself.

  

  Karel Appel
  • Book
  • Democracy
  • Feelings

• The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.

  

  Vladimir Nabokov
  • Translations
  • Prettiest
  • Paraphrase