The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase. - Vladimir Nabokov

Same topic Authors

Quote of the day

Our sins are debts that none can pay but Christ. It is not our tears, but His blood; it is not our sighs, but His sufferings, that can testify for our sins. Christ must pay all, or we are prisoners forever.

Vladimir Nabokov

The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.

Literal, Paraphrase, Prettiest, Thousand, Translation

Same Author Quotes

I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.

Defiance, Desire, Desires, World, Worlds

Mind you, sometimes the angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away: that’s when you get shooting stars.

Angel, Mind, Shooting, Smoke, Stars

Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.

Irrational, Mysteries, Mystery, Rational, Reason

Because you took advantage of my disadvantage.

Advantage, Disadvantage, Disadvantages, Took

It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.

Love, Sight, Valentines Day

Similar Quotes

Thomas Brooks

Blood, Christ, Forever, Sighs, Sins, Suffering

Will Self

My novels tend to come about from a fusion of two big ideas, creating a critical mass that then fissions, throwing off hundreds of other particles, riffs, tropes and characters.

Character, Ideas, Novels, Particles, Two

Howie Mandel

You release these things, and if they fly then you have more.

Fly, Ifs, Release, Things

Orrin Hatch

Chief Justice [John] Roberts compared judges to umpires, who apply rules they did not write and cannot change to the competition before them.

Compared, Judges, Justice, Umpires, Writing

Frances Hodgson Burnett

If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.

Cheer Up, Garden, Look, Positive Attitude, See, World