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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 4c26b97 | My delightful, my love, my life, I don't understand anything: how can you not be with me? I'm so infinitely used to you that I now feel myself lost and empty: without you, my soul. You turn my life into something light, amazing, rainbowed--you put a glint of happiness on everything--always different: sometimes you can be smoky-pink, downy, sometimes dark, winged--and I don't know when I love your eyes more--when they are open or shut. It's .. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| ad43861 | Fame in our day is too common to be confused with the enduring glow around the deserving book. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| aa1d025 | If his Russian was music, his English was murder. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| 3d9afcc | Her hair was well brushed that day and sheened darkly in contrast with the lusterless pallor of her neck and arms. She wore the striped tee shirt which in his lone fantasies he especially liked to peel off her twisting torso. The oilcloth was divided into blue and white squares. A smear of honey stained what remained of the butter in its cool crock. 'All right. And the third Real Thing?' She considered him. A fiery droplet in the wick of he.. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| c1dfd1e | Without you I wouldn't have moved this way, to speak the language of flowers. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| a1451f2 | La mire y la mire, y supe con tanta certeza como que me he de morir, que la queria mas que a nada imaginado o visto en la tierra, mas que a nada anhelado en este mundo. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| 9872d83 | If told I am a bad poet, I smile; but if told I am a poor scholar, I reach for my heaviest dictionary. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| f514e82 | The recollection also came back empty, and for the first time in all his life, perhaps, Luzhin asked himself the question - where exactly had it all gone, what had become of his childhood, whither had the veranda floated, whither, rustling through the bushes, had the familiar paths crept away? | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| 6ffc0cd | No, I have as yet said nothing, or, rather, said only bookish words... and in the end the logical thing would be for me to give up and I would give up if I were labouring for a reader existing today, but as there is in the world not a single human who can speak my language; or, more simply, not a single human who can speak; or, even more simply, not a single human; I must think only of myself, of that force which urges me to express myself. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| 9eb28fb | Where is the happiness, the sunshine, where are those thick skittles of wood which crashed and bounced so nicely, where is my bicycle with the low handlebars and the big gear? It seems there's a law which says that nothing ever vanishes, that matter is indestructible; therefore the chips from my skittles and the spokes of my bicycle still exist somewhere to this day. The pity of it is that I'll never find them again - never. | growing-up melancholy nostalgic remembering | Vladimir Nabokov | |
| 4403916 | When stripped and shiny in the mist of the bath house, his bold virilia contrasted harshly with his girlish grace. He was a regular faunlet. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| 1112bfa | Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze. Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet. Age: five thousand three hundred days. Profession: none, or "starlet". Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze? Why are you hiding, darling? (I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze, I cannot get out, said the starling)." -- | vladimir-nabokov | Vladimir Nabokov | |
| 7c815cb | How can I explain to you, my happiness, my golden wonderful happiness, how much I am all yours -- with all my memories, poems, outbursts, inner whirlwinds? Or explain that I cannot write a word without hearing how you will pronounce it -- and can't recall a single trifle I've lived through without regret -- so sharp! -- that we haven't lived through it together -- whether it's the most, the most personal, intransmissible -- or only some sun.. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| 010a00e | And to fulfill the fish wish of the womb, A school of Freudians headed for the tomb. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| a3e2b38 | I feel I understand Existence, or at least a minute part Of my existence, only through my art, | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| a532e34 | Sometimes, though, angels smoke-in their sleeves. But when the archangel goes by, they throw their cigarettes away: This is what falling stars are. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| 66f1374 | I would fight of course. Oh, I would fight. Better destroy everything than surrender her. | obsessed obsession obsessions possessiveness | Vladimir Nabokov | |
| 0291b68 | If there is anything of which I am certain in life it is that I shall never exchange the liberty of my exile for the vile parody of home. | Vladimir Nabokov | ||
| 862a181 | Ustedes, todos ustedes, han obtenido algo de la vida: dinero, amor-cosas en tierra firme-, pero, ?acaso el tiempo en que estuvimos embarcados no fue el mejor de nuestras vidas? Cuando eramos jovenes en la mar; jovenes sin nada, sobre la mar que nada regala, excepto buenos golpes y momentos para ponerte a prueba, solo eso, ?no sientes haberlo perdido? | Joseph Conrad | ||
| 56c97e0 | The hair of his face, on the contrary, carroty and flaming, resembled a growth of copper wire clipped short to the line of the lip; while, no matter how close he shaved, fiery metallic gleams passed, when he moved his head, over the surface of his cheeks. | seas typhoon | Joseph Conrad | |
| f1b5360 | the chipped plates might have been disinterred from some kitchen midden near an inhabited lake; and the chops recalled times more ancient still. They brought forcibly to one's mind the night of ages when the primeval man, evolving the first rudiments of cookery from his dim consciousness, scorched lumps of flesh at a fire of sticks... | primeval-man tales-of-the-sea | Joseph Conrad | |
| 58e324d | To cut oneself entirely from one's kind is impossible. To live in a desert one must be a saint. | Joseph Conrad | ||
| 0e38ae5 | The typhoon had got on Jukes' nerves | joseph conrad | ||
| 33b657a | By heavens! there is something after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another must not look at a halter. Steal a horse straight out. Very well. He has done it. Perhaps he can ride. But there is a way of looking at a halter that would provoke the most charitable of saints into a kick. | humanity philosophy social-norms | Joseph Conrad | |
| edef95d | I am quite willing to be the blind instrument of higher ends. To give one's life for the cause is nothing. But to have one's illusions destroyed - that is really almost more than one can bear. | Joseph Conrad | ||
| 30d0dba | I can't afford to despise anything. An absurdity may be the starting-point of the most dangerous complications. | Joseph Conrad | ||
| 35bfd85 | Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him--some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantasti.. | Joseph Conrad | ||
| 01b6a67 | And Mr Verloc, temparamentally identical with his associates, drew fine distinctions in his mind on the strenght of insignificant differences. He drew them with a certain complacency, because the instinct of conventional respectability was strong within him, being only overcome by defect which he shared with a large proportion of revolutionary reformers of a given social state. For obviously one does not revolt against the advantages and op.. | Joseph Conrad | ||
| 70d83a9 | For the vision of a novelist is both complex and specialised; complex, because behind his characters and apart from them must stand something stable to which he relates them; specialised because since he is a single person with one sensibility the aspects of life in which he can believe with conviction are strictly limited | duality joseph-conrad writing-craft | Virginia Woolf | |
| 5383839 | It was the very essence of his life to be a solitary achievement, accomplished not by hermit-like withdrawal with it's silence and immobility but by a system of restless wandering, by the detachment of an impermanent dweller amongst changing scenes. In this scheme he had perceived the means of passing through life without suffering and almost without a single care in the world- invulnerable because elusive. | Joseph Conrad | ||
| aa0d8da | You see we had on the whole liked him well enough. And liking is not sufficient to keep going the interest one takes in a human being. With hatred, apparently, it is otherwise. | Joseph Conrad | ||
| d010ca3 | I believe in children praying--well, women, too, but I rather think God expects men to be more self-reliant. I don't hold with a man everlastingly bothering the Almighty with his silly troubles. | spirituality | Joseph Conrad | |
| 01bb6ec | The mind of man is capable of anything-because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage-who can tell?-but truth-truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder-the man know, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet the truth with his own true stuff-with his own inborn .. | inspirational | Joseph Conrad | |
| f8ebe2e | Fine fellows--cannibals--in their place. | Joseph Conrad | ||
| 45bb0dc | It was a great peace, as if the earth had been one grave, and for a time I stood there thinking mostly of the living who, buried in remote places out of the knowledge of mankind, are still fated to share in its tragic or grotesque miseries. In its noble struggles too -- who knows? The human heart is vast enough to contain all the world. It is valient enough to bear the burden, but where is the courage that would cast it off? | Joseph Conrad | ||
| b200d2b | It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. | women | joseph conrad | |
| ea4b6c3 | You, too!" it seemed to say, "you, too, shall taste of that peace and that unrest in a searching intimacy with your own self - obscure as we were and as supreme in the face of all the winds and all the seas, in an immensity that receives no impress, preserves no memories, and keeps no reckoning of lives." | Joseph Conrad | ||
| 0595c7f | most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order.... In the immutability of their surroundings, the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; ... a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and generally he finds the sec.. | Joseph Conrad | ||
| 9391ed7 | Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy! | thoughts | Joseph Conrad | |
| 0eac78e | I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more--the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort--to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires--and expires, too soon, to.. | disillusionment life youth | Joseph Conrad | |
| fd1bb46 | We wander in our thousands over the face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, earning beyond the seas our fame, our money, or only a crust of bread; but it seems to me that for each of us going home must be like going to render an account. | family ghosts home home-town homecoming humanity mankind old-friends prodigal-daughters prodigal-sons return reunion stomping-grounds | Joseph Conrad | |
| d81a085 | The well-known shrill voice startled Almayer from his dream of splendid future into the unpleasant realities of the present hour. An unpleasant voice too. He had heard it for many years, and with every year he liked it less. No matter; there would be an end to all this soon. | Joseph Conrad | ||
| 7fc8c5c | it may be that it is this very dulness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and welcome. Nevertheless, there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening when we see, hear, understand so much--everything--in a flash--before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence. | Joseph Conrad | ||
| 00acb9d | For a moment I had a view of a world that seemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of disorder, while, in truth, thanks to our unwearied efforts, it is as sunny an arrangement of small conveniences as the mind of man can conceive. | Joseph Conrad |