"Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly……" — Vladimir Nabokov
"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."
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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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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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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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