Nikolai Gogol famous quotes

A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Cutting

The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Sad #Stories #Looks

The current generation now sees everything clearly, it marvels at the errors, it laughs at the folly of its ancestors, not seeing that this chronicle is all overscored by divine fire, that every letter of it cries out, that from everywhere the piercing finger is pointed at it, at this current generation; but the current generation laughs and presumptuously, proudly begins a series of new errors, at which their descendants will also laugh afterwards.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Fire #Errors #Laughing

He who has talent in him must be purer in soul than anyone else. Another will be forgiven much, but to him it will not be forgiven. A man who leaves the house in bright, festive clothes needs only one drop of mud splashed from under a wheel, and people all surround him, point their fingers at him, and talk about his slovenliness, while the same people ignore many spots on other passers-by who are wearing everyday clothes. For on everyday clothes the spots do not show.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Men #Clothes #People

Perfect nonsense goes on in the world. Sometimes there is no plausibility at all
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Perfect #Goes On #World

In the end dreams became his life, and his whole life thereafter took a strange turn: one might say he slept while waking and watched while asleep.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Dream #Might #Waking

The experience of ages has shown that a man who works on the land is purer, nobler, higher, and more moral... Agriculture should be at the basis of everything. That's my idea.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Men #Land #Ideas

Whatever you may say, the body depends on the soul.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Soul #May #Body

I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through the tears unseen and unknown by anyone.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Laughter #Hero #Journey

...nothing could be more pleasant than to live in solitude, enjoy the spectacle of nature, and occasionally read some book... ...
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Book #Solitude #Enjoy

We have the marvelous gift of making everything insignificant.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Insignificant

It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Glasses #Use #Literature

Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Beautiful #Thinking #Accord

Everywhere across whatever sorrows of which our life is woven, some radiant joy will gaily flash past.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Past #Joy #Sorrow

What is stronger in us — passion or habit? Or are all the violent impulses, all the whirl of our desires and turbulent passions, only the consequence of our ardent age, and is it only through youth that they seem deep and shattering?
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Passion #Age #Desire

...how much savage coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manners...
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Savages #Manners

I am who I am and that's who I am
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Life #Who I Am #I Am Who I Am

Everything resembles the truth, everything can happen to a man.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Men

They're thinking of turning the peasant into an educated man. Why, first of all they should make him a good and prosperous farmer and then he'll learn all that is necessary for him to know.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Men #Thinking #Firsts

We ought to thank God for that. Yes, the man who tills the land is more worthy of respect than any.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Men #Land #Thank God

But there is nothing enduring in the world, and therefore even joy in the second minute is already not as acute as in the first; in the third minute it becomes still weaker and finally merges unnoticeably with the usual condition of the soul, as a circle on the water, caused by the fall of a pebble, finally merges with the smooth surface.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Fall #Circles #Water

The more debris there is the more it will show the governor's activity.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Debris #Shows

I saw that I'd get nowhere on the straight path, and that to go crookedly was straighter.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Path #Saws

Gambling is the great leveller. All men are equal- at cards.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Men #Gambling #Cards

Ah, steeds, steeds, what steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes? Is there a sensitive ear, alert as a flame, in your every fiber? Hearing the familiar song from above, all in one accord you strain your bronze chests and, hooves barely touching the ground, turn into straight lines cleaving the air, and all inspired by God it rushes on!
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Song #Horse #Home

Two turtle doves will show thee Where my cold ashes lie And sadly murmuring tell thee How in tears I did die
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Lying #Two #Turtles

But wise is the man who disdains no character, but with searching glance explores him to the root and cause of all.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Wise #Character #Men

[F]or contemporary judgment does not recognize that much depth of soul is needed to light up the picture drawn from contemptible life and elevate it into a pearl of creation...
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Light #Soul #Doe

Like all of us sinners, General Betrishchev was endowed with many virtues and many defects. Both the one and the other were scattered through him in a sort of picturesque disorder. Self-sacrifice, magnanimity in decisive moments, courage, intelligence--and with all that, a generous mixture of self-love, ambition, vanity, petty personal ticklishness, and a good many of those things which a man simply cannot do without.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Ambition #Sacrifice #Men

Also, though not over-elderly, he was not over-young.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Elderly #Young #Gogol

It is well-known that there are many faces in the world over the finishing of which nature did not take much trouble, did not employ any fine tools such as files, gimlets, and so on, but simply hacked them out with round strokes: one chop-a nose appears; another chop-lips appear; eyes are scooped out with a big drill; and she lets it go into the world rough-hewn, saing: "ALIVE!
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Eye #Let It Go #Tools

They don’t listen to me, they don’t hear me, they don’t see me.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Listen To Me

You can't imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Stupid #World #Imagine

There exists a kind of laughter which is worthy to be ranked with the higher lyric emotions and is infinitely different from the twitching of a mean merrymaker.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Laughter #Mean #Different

There are certain words which are nearer and dearer to a man than any others.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Men #Certain

The Lord grant we may all be tillers of the soil.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Soil #May #Lord

It's the most righteous, which of course is not the same thing as the most profitable.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Righteous

Keep not money, but keep good people's company.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#People #Good People #Company

Don't blame the mirror if your face is faulty.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Mirrors #Faces #Blame

A time of famine and poverty will come and the people as a whole as well as every individual in it will suffer.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#People #Suffering #Poverty

As you pass from the tender years of youth into harsh and embittered manhood, make sure you take with you on your journey all the human emotions! Don't leave them on the road, for you will not pick them up afterwards!
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Journey #Years #Youth

There are passions that it is not for man to choose.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Passion #Men

Countless as the sands of the sea are human passions.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Passion #Sea #Literature

Let me warn you, if you start chasing after views, you'll be left without bread and without views.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Views #Bread #Belief

This was not the old Chichikov. This was some wreckage of the old Chichikov. The inner state of his soul might be compared to a demolished building, which has been demolished so that from it a new one could be built; but the new one has not been started yet, because the infinitive plan has not yet come from the architect and the workers are left in perplexity.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Soul #Might #Wreckage

However stupid a fools words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Stupid #Men #Intelligent

What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourself.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Laughing #Laugh At Yourself

There are occasions when a woman, no matter how weak and impotent in character she may be in comparison with a man, will yet suddenly become not only harder than any man, but even harder than anything and everything in the world.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Character #Men #World

Man is such a wondrous being that it is never possible to count up all his merits at once. The more you study him, the more new particulars appear, and their description would be endless.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Men #Merit #Would Be

Steeds, steeds, what steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes?
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Horse #Home #Whirlwind

...and sank into the profound slumber which comes only to such fortunate folk as are troubled neither with mosquitoes nor fleas nor excessive activity of brain.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Profound #Brain #Slumber

But youth has a future. The closer he came to graduation, the more his heart beat. He said to himself: “This is still not life, this is only the preparation for life.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Heart #Preparation #Youth

At the end of the table, the secretary was reading the decision in some case, but in such a mournful and monotonous voice, that the condemned man himself would have fallen asleep while listening to it. The judge, no doubt, would have been the first of all to do so, had he not entered into an engrossing conversation while it was going on.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Reading #Men #Voice

Go along, go along quickly, and set all you have on the table for us. We don't want doughnuts, honey buns, poppy cakes, and other dainties; bring us a whole sheep, serve a goat and forty-year old mead! And plenty of vodka, not vodka with all sorts of fancies, not with raisins and flavorings, but pure foaming vodka, that hisses and bubbles like mad.
-- Nikolai Gogol

#Sheep #Years #Cake