A Quote by Vladimir Nabokov

Life is short. From here to that old car you know so well there is a stretch of twenty, twenty-five paces. It is a very short walk. Make those twenty-five steps. Now. Right now. Come just as you are. And we shall live happily ever after.
People learn twenty-five percent from their teacher, twenty-five percent from listening to themselves, twenty-five percent from their friends, and twenty-five percent from time.
For years I taught in universities and high schools for classes of 30 or 35 students. Now I teach in very large venues with thousands of people in the audience. I used to have notes. Now I just let go and let God. I just allow it to come, and I didn't do that before. I never even used the word "God" for twenty or twenty-five years. Now it just rolls out of my mouth all the time.
I've been singing this song now for twenty five minutes. I could sing it for another twenty five minutes. I'm not proud... or tired.
People who read me seem to be divided into four groups: twenty-five percent like me for the right reasons; twenty-five percent like me for the wrong reasons; twenty-five percent hate me for the wrong reasons; twenty-five percent hate me for the right reasons. It's that last twenty-five percent that worries me.
I saw an advertisement the other day for the secret of life. It said "The secret of life can be yours for twenty-five shillings. Sent to Secret of Life Institute, Willesden." So I wrote away, seemed a good bargain, secret of life, twenty-five shillings. And I got a letter back saying, "If you think you can get the secret of life for twenty-five shillings, you don't deserve to have it. Send fifty shillings for the secret of life."
I don't believe in holy writ. Buy fifty books or twenty-five books, take three weeks off, read them and make up your own theory. The fact that you end up literally burning twenty-two out of twenty-five books is beside the point.
People only live for forty or fifty years so if you were married for twenty or twenty-five of those then that was it. Now people live for eighty years and if your married for fifty or sixty of those you start to get on each other's nerves.
Until your mid-twenties, you're still growing up mentally. It's fair to say there's a bigger difference between twenty and twenty-five than between twenty-five and forty in terms of who you are, how you relate to your work, and what you want out of it.
This man, who for twenty-five years has been reading and writing about art, and in all that time has never understood anything about art, has for twenty-five years been hashing over other people's ideas about realism, naturalism and all that nonsense; for twenty-five years he has been reading and writing about what intelligent people already know and about what stupid people don't want to know--which means that for twenty-five years he's been taking nothing and making nothing out of it. And with it all, what conceit! What pretension!
I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?
The real student is studying, learning, inquiring, exploring, not just until he is twenty or twenty-five, but throughout life.
You know we receive an education in the schools from books. All those books that people became educated from twenty-five years ago, are wrong now, and those that are good now, will be wrong again twenty-five years from now. So if they are wrong then, they are also wrong now, and the one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is misled. All books that are written are wrong, the one who is not educated cannot write a book and the one who is educated, is really not educated but he is misled and the one who is misled cannot write a book which is correct.
Nobody gives twenty-five million dollars to anybody if they're not getting twenty-five million worth out of it. Forget it. It just doesn't happen.
The mathematical life of a mathematician is short. Work rarely improves after the age of twenty-five or thirty. If little has been accomplished by then, little will ever be accomplished.
Make your initial contact short and sweet. Five sentences or less, or under 150 words. If someone instant messages you while you're online, go ahead and IM them back if you want. Otherwise, wait twenty-two to twenty-three hours between email contacts for the first few messages. Don't send messages while most people are sleeping, even if you're wide-awake. Shoot for business hours or just after dinnertime.
Twenty-five, he was. Twenty-five tomorrow. Some years the snow had melted for his birthday, but not this year, and so it had been a long winter full of cows.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!