Best 94 quotes of Nikolai Gogol on MyQuotes

Nikolai Gogol

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    Nikolai Gogol

    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!

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    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.

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    Nikolai Gogol

    As countless as grains of sand by the sea are human passions, and they all differ; all of them, vile or lofty, begin by being under a man's control and then become his terrible masters. Blessed is he who has chosen the most lofty of passions: his immeasurable bliss grows and multiplies tenfold with every hour and minute, and he penetrates deeper and deeper into the infinite paradise of his soul.

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    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?

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    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!

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

    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.

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

    Countless are, as the sand in the sea, the deep desires of men, and none resembles the other, and all of them, whether shameful, or great, in the beginning are obedient, but later become terrible masters over him.

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    Nikolai Gogol

    Countless as the sands of sea are human passions, and not all of them are alike, and all of them, base and noble alike, are at first obedient to man and only later on become his terrible masters.

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    Nikolai Gogol

    Do we ever get what we really want? Do we ever achieve what our powers have ostensibly equipped us for? No: everything works by contraries.

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

    [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.

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    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.

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    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.

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    Nikolai Gogol

    In the course of reading he [Alexander 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!

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    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.

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

    I shall laugh my bitter laugh.

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    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.

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    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!

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    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.

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

    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.

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

    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.

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    Nikolai Gogol

    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.

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

    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.

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    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 twitching of a mean merrymaker.

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    Nikolai Gogol

    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.

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    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.

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

    We have the marvelous gift of making everything insignificant.

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    Nikolai Gogol

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

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    Nikolai Gogol

    What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourself.

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    Nikolai Gogol

    Whatever you may say, the body depends on the soul.

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    Nikolai Gogol

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