My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French.
The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
Who can say what heartbreaks are caused in a dog by our discontinuing a romp?
Human thought, flying on the trapezes of the star-filled universe, with mathematics stretched beneath, was like an acrobat working with a net but suddenly noticing that in reality there is no net.
Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
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 yellowly blurred, illusive, lost.