This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In his time, this one had little to speak of, the softest word went gurrituck in his skull. For him the moon was always in Scandinavia and his daughter was a foreign thing.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
When feudalism was overthrown and “free” capitalist society appeared in the world, it at once became apparent that this freedom meant a new system of oppression and exploitation of the working people.
Insecurity | Majority | Question | Sense | Old |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
To be successful, insurrection must rely not upon conspiracy and not upon a party, but upon the advanced class. That is the first point. Insurrection must rely upon a revolutionary upsurge of the people. That is the second point. Insurrection must rely upon that turning-point in the history of the growing revolution when the activity of the advanced ranks of the people is at its height, and when the vacillations in the ranks of the enemy and in the ranks of the weak, half-hearted and irresolute friends of the revolution are strongest. That is the third point. And these three conditions for raising the question of insurrection distinguish Marxism from Blanquism.
Sense |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory.
Better | Bourgeoisie | Brutality | Church | Gold | Government | Haste | Lesson | Means | Order | People | Principles | Property | Sense | Struggle | Sympathy | Wealth | Will | Work | Government | Think |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
There are teachers and students with square minds who are by nature meant to undergo the fascination of categories. For them, 'schools' and 'movements' are everything; by painting a group symbol on the brow of mediocrity, they condone their own incomprehension of true genius.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
I could isolate, consciously, little. Everything seemed blurred, yellow-clouded, yielding nothing tangible. Her inept acrostics, maudlin evasions, theopathies every recollection formed ripples of mysterious meaning. Everything seemed yellow-ly blurred, illusive, lost.
Ecstasy | Enjoyment | Fate | Genius | Gratitude | Magic | Oneness | Sense | Fate |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
In spite of everything I loved you, and will go on loving you--on my knees, with my shoulders drawn back, showing my heels to the headsman and straining my goose neck--even then. And afterwards--perhaps most of all afterwards--I shall love you, and one day we shall have a real, all-embracing explanation, and then perhaps we shall somehow fit together, you and I, and turn ourselves in such a way that we form one pattern, and solve the puzzle: draw a line from point A to point B...without looking, or, without lifting the pencil...or in some other way...we shall connect the points, draw the line, and you and I shall form that unique design for which I yearn. If they do this kind of thing to me every morning, they will get me trained and I shall become quite wooden.
Sense |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Measure me while I live - after it will be too late.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Reality is a very subjective affair. I can only define it as a kind of gradual accumulation of information; and as specialization. If we take a lily, for instance, or any other kind of natural object, a lily is more real to a naturalist than it is to an ordinary person. But it is still more real to a botanist. And yet another stage of reality is reached with that botanist who is a specialist in lilies. You can get nearer and nearer, so to speak, to reality; but you never get near enough because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable. You can know more and more about one thing but you can never know everything about one thing: it’s hopeless. So that we live surrounded by more or less ghostly objects— that machine, there, for instance. It’s a complete ghost to me— I don’t understand a thing about it and, well, it’s a mystery to me, as much of a mystery as it would be to Lord Byron.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
The shock of her death froze something in me. The child I loved, was gone, but I kept looking for her - long after I had left my own childhood behind. The poison was in the wound, you see. And the wound wouldn't heal.
Future | Life | Life | Man | Posterity | Sense | Tenderness | Will |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Children of her type contrive the purest philosophies. Ada had worked out her own little system. Hardly a week had elapsed since Vans arrival when he was found worthy of being initiated in her web of wisdom. An individual’s life consisted of certain classified things: 'real things' which we're unfrequent and priceless, simply 'things' which formed the routine stuff of life; and 'ghost things,' also called 'fogs,' such as fever, toothache, dreadful disappointments, and death. Three or more things occurring at the same time formed a 'tower,' or, if they came in immediate succession, they made a 'bridge.' 'Real towers' and 'real bridges' we're the joys of life, and when the towers came in a series, one experienced supreme rapture; it almost never happened, though. In some circumstances, in a certain light, a neutral 'thing' might look or even actually become 'real' or else, conversely, it might coagulate into a fetid 'fog.' When the joy and the joyless happened to be intermixed, simultaneously or along the ramp of duration, one was confronted with 'ruined towers' and 'broken bridges.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don't stop to think, don't interrupt the scream, exhale, release life’s rapture. Everything is blooming. Everything is flying. Everything is screaming, choking on its screams. Laughter. Running. Let-down hair. That is all there is to life.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Being a murderer with a sensational but incomplete and unorthodox memory, I cannot tell you, ladies and gentlemen, the exact day which I first knew with certainty that the red convertible was following us.
Art | Beauty | Dawn | Doubt | Light | Literature | Nonsense | Sense | Yielding | Art | Beauty |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
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.