Nikolai Gogol Quotes

55 Sourced Quotes

To tell the truth, I often felt uneasy when I thought of the excessive brittleness and fragility of the moon. The moon is generally repaired in Hamburg, and very imperfectly. It is done by a lame cooper, an obvious blockhead who has no idea how to do it. He took waxed thread and olive-oil—hence that pungent smell over all the earth which compels people to hold their noses. And this makes the moon so fragile that no men can live on it, but only noses. Therefore we cannot see our noses, because they are on the moon.

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

Nikolai Gogol
However stupid a fool's words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man.

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

Nikolai Gogol
Russia, are you not speeding along like a fiery and matchless troika?

Nikolai Gogol
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
Among a number of intelligent suggestions there was finally this one too, strange as it may seem, that Chichikov might be Napoleon in disguise...

Nikolai Gogol
... it's not my job to preach a sermon. Art is anyhow a homily. My job is to speak in living images, not in arguments. I must exhibit life full-face, not discuss life.

Nikolai Gogol
[Final lines] mother, mother, save your unhappy son! Let a tear fall on his aching head! See how they torture him! Press the poor orphan to your bosom! He has no rest in this world; they hunt him from place to place.

Mother, mother, have pity on your sick child! And do you know that the Bey of Algiers has a wart under his nose?

Nikolai Gogol
When the priest went in, he stopped short at the sight of this defamation of God's holy place, and dared not serve the requiem on such a spot. And so the church was left forever, with monsters stuck in the doors and windows, was overgrown with forest trees, roots, rough grass and wild thorns, and no one can now find the way to it.

Nikolai Gogol
The gentleman lolling back in the chaise was neither dashingly handsome nor yet unbearably ugly, neither too stout nor yet too thin; it could not be claimed he was old but he was no stripling, either. His arrival in the town created no stir and was not marked by anything out of the ordinary.

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

Nikolai Gogol
You can't imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays. The things these scribblers write!

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

Nikolai Gogol
In the course of the reading he [Pushkin] became more and more melancholy and finally became completely gloomy. When the reading was over he uttered in a voice full of sorrow: "Goodness, how sad is our Russia!"

Nikolai Gogol
There is no word so perk and quick, which bursts from the heart with such spontaneity, which seethes and bubbles with such vitality, as the aptly spoken Russian word

Nikolai Gogol
Dogs are clever fellows; they know all about politics...

Nikolai Gogol
Russia! Russia! I see you now, from my wondrous, beautiful past I behold you! How wretched, dispersed, and uncomfortable everything is about you...

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

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

Nikolai Gogol
Why are you being so stingy?", Sobakevich demanded. "It's cheap at the price. A rogue would cheat you, sell you some worthless rubbish instead of souls, but mine are as juicy as ripe nuts, all picked—they are all either craftsmen or sturdy peasants.

Nikolai Gogol