Nikolai Gogol Quotes

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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
As it is so strangely ordained in this world, what is amusing will turn into being gloomy, if you stand too long before it, and then God knows what ideas may not stray into the mind... Why is it that even in moments of unthinking, careless gaiety a different and strange mood comes upon one?

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
How much savage coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manners...

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
People think that the human brain is in the head. Nothing of the sort; it is carried by the wind from the Caspian Sea.

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
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
What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourselves!

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

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
I tell everyone very plainly that I take bribes, but what kind of bribes? Why, greyhound puppies. That's a totally different matter.

Nikolai Gogol
However, nothing turned out as Tchitchikoff had intended.

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
I am very fond of the modest manner of life of those solitary owners of remote villages, who in Little Russia are commonly called "old-fashioned," who are like tumbledown picturesque little houses, delightful in their simplicity and complete unlikeness to the new smooth buildings whose walls have not yet been discolored by the rain, whose roofs are not yet covered with green lichen, and whose porch does not display its bricks through the peeling stucco.

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

Nikolai Gogol
And ruined is the Cossack! He is lost for all the chivalry of the Cossacks! He will see Zaporozhye no more; nor his father's farms, nor the church of God. Ukraine will see no more the bravest of the sons who undertook to defend her. Old Taras will tear the gray hair from his head and curse the day and hour when he begot such a son to shame him.

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

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

Nikolai Gogol
The reason why Proshka wore such large boots can be explained at once: Plyushkin kept only one pair of boots for all of his servants, however numerous they were, and they always stood in the hall.

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

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

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

Nikolai Gogol