"Once upon a time there lived in Berlin,……" — Vladimir Nabokov
"Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster. This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man's life, detail is always welcome."
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Vladimir Nabokov
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269 Quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov has 269 quotes on this site.
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Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times…
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I have never seen a more lucid, better balanced, mad mind than mine.
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The tiny madman in his padded cell.
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There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and…
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The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink…
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Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
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Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
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My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
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I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it…
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The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of…
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A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.
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Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
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More Abandoned Quotes
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The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt…
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Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have…
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Basic human contact - the meeting of eyes, the exchanging of words - is to the psyche what oxygen is…
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My whole life I've had the fear that I was going to be abandoned.
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As individuals and as a nation, we now suffer from social narcissism. The beloved Echo of our ancestors, the virgin…
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The condition of the tribes which occupy the country set apart for them in the West is highly prosperous, and…
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Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side.…
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After the Berlin Wall came down I visited that city and I will never forget it. The abandoned checkpoints. The…
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Here is the tragedy: when you are the victim of depression, not only do you feel utterly helpless and abandoned…
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Becoming a mother makes you the mother of all children. From now on each wounded, abandoned, frightened child is yours.…
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Day after day we looked for rain, and day after day we saw nothing but the sun. Lavender that we…
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