Nikolai Gogol Quotes

55 Sourced Quotes

They insist that an author should write in the strictest, purest and noblest language: in short, they expect the Russian language to drop from the clouds, already refined, and that it should come naturally to the lips, so that all they have to do is to open their mouth and stick out their tongue. It goes without saying, of course, that the feminine half of the human species is very wise; but it must be confessed that our respected readers are even wiser.

Nikolai Gogol
Rus! Rus! I see you, from my lovely enchanted remoteness I see you: a country of dinginess, and bleakness and dispersal; no arrogant wonders of nature crowned by the arrogant wonders of art appear within you to delight or terrify the eyes... So what is the incomprehensible secret force driving me towards you? Why do I constantly hear the echo of your mournful song as it is carried from the sea through your entire expanse?... And since you are without end yourself, is it not within you that a boundless thought will be born?

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

Nikolai Gogol
Of course, Alexander the Great was a hero, but why smash the chairs?

Nikolai Gogol
The more destruction there is everywhere, the more it shows the activity of town authorities.

Nikolai Gogol
The sergeant's widow told you a lie when she said I flogged her. I never flogged her. She flogged herself.

Nikolai Gogol
All the world knows that France sneezes when England takes a pinch of snuff.

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
And for a long time yet, led by some wondrous power, 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
The year 2000: April 43rd.—To-day is a day of splendid triumph. Spain has a king; he has been found, and I am he.

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

Nikolai Gogol
"Turn around, son! What a funny figure you are! Are those priests' cassocks you are wearing? And do they all go about like that at the academy?" With these words old Bulba greeted his two sons who had been studying at the Kiev college and had come home to their father.

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

Nikolai Gogol
[Is it not that] you too, Russia, are speeding along like a spirited troika that nothing can overtake? … Everything on earth is flying past, and looking askance, other nations and states draw aside and make way.

Nikolai Gogol
Apparently that does sometimes happen. Apparently even men like Chichikov are transformed into poets for a few moments in their lives: though the word "poet" would be an exaggeration here.

Nikolai Gogol
There are people who exist in this world not like entities but like the speckles or spots on something.

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

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
What is utterly absurd happens in the world.

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

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

Nikolai Gogol