Philosophy Quote by Vladimir Nabokov — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“The kind of poem I produced in those days was hardly anything more than a sign I made of being alive, of passing or having passed, or hoping to pass, through certain intense human emotions. It was a phenomenon of orientation rather than of art, thus comparable to stripes of paint on a roadside rock or to a pillared heap of stones marking a mountain trail.”

“while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space,”

“The fame of his likes circulates briskly but soon grows heavy and stale; and as for history it will limit his life story to the dash between two dates.”

“The square root of I is I.”

“Death often is the point of life's joke.”

“We live in a stocking which is in the process of being turned inside out, without our ever knowing for sure to what phase of the process our moment of consciousness corresponds.”

“Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.”

“One has to seek out pleasurable sensations, in the absence of which blandness comes naturally. The upshot of this is that we must continually work at keeping suffering (including tedium) at bay, and we can do so only imperfectly. Dissatisfaction does and must pervade life. There are moments, perhaps even periods, of satisfaction, but they occur against a background of dissatisfied striving.”

“Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,-Wait and hope.”

“Acting Rear Admiral Gillet said, “Captain Scultetus, please try to understand that Britain and Germany are at war! The HMS Armadale Castle has been ordered to wipe the Swakop River Radio station off the map!”

“Ik kwam er achter dat ik er mijn hele leven heus niet naar had verlang om te leven - als wat anderen doen tenminste leven genoemd kan worden - maar wel om mezelf te kunnen uitdrukken.”