And Schyogolev launched on a discussion of politics. Like many unpaid windbags he thought that he could combine the reports he read in the papers by paid windbags into an orderly scheme, upon following which a logical and sober mind (in this case his mind) could with no effort explain and foresee a multitude of world events. The names of countries and of their leading representatives became in his hands something in the nature of labels for more or less full but essentially identical vessels, whose contents he poured this way and that. France was AFRAID of something or other and therefore would never allow it. England was AIMING at something. This statesman CRAVED a rapprochement, while that one wanted to increase his PRESTIGE. Someone was PLOTTING and someone was STRIVING for something. In short, the world Schyogolev created came out as some kind of collection of limited, humorless, faceless and abstract bullies, and the more brains, cunning and circumspection he found in their mutual activities the more stupid, vulgar and simple his world became. Vladimir Nabokov
About This Quote

Nikita Klonovitch, the protagonist of this story, is a kind of simpleton. He believes in the existence of a world created by clever people. Everyone in his view is wise and intelligent with the exception of him. When he learns that there is no world created by clever people, he begins to see the world in an entirely new light.

Source: The Gift

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More Quotes By Vladimir Nabokov
  1. It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.
  2. I think it is all a matter of love the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes
  3. I recall certain moments, let us call them icebergs in paradise, when after having had my fill of her —after fabulous, insane exertions that left me limp and azure-barred— I would gather her in my arms with, at last, a mute moan of human tenderness...
  4. Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.
  5. Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece
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