Top 100 Nikolai Gogol Quotes
#1. I love [Nikolai] Gogol's great eye for idiot behavior. Gogol said that life is so tragic, so stupendously sad that we'd better laugh a lot and enjoy ourselves. You either get a sense of humor going or you go under.
Mel Brooks
#2. Dostoevski's The Double is his best work though an obvious and shameless imitation of Gogol's Nose.
Vladimir Nabokov
#3. In his mind, nothing could be more delightful than to live in solitude, and enjoy the spectacle of nature, and sometimes read some book or other.
Nikolai Gogol
#4. One must keep a store of common sense," said Tchitchikov, "and consult one's common sense at every minute, have a friendly conversation with it.
Nikolai Gogol
#5. I shall think soon that what people say is true: every woman is possessed by her own peculiar devil of curiosity
Nikolai Gogol
#6. There are passions that it is not for man to choose.
Nikolai Gogol
#7. Ah! I--to you, Petrovitch, this--" It must be known that Akakiy Akakievitch expressed himself chiefly by prepositions, adverbs, and scraps of phrases which had no meaning whatever.
Nikolai Gogol
#8. One cannot expect men not to get drunk when there is nothing to do!
Nikolai Gogol
#9. It's the most righteous, which of course is not the same thing as the most profitable.
Nikolai Gogol
#10. Russia! Russia ... Everything in you is open, desolate and level; your squat towns barely protrude in the midst of the plains like dots, like counters; there is nothing to tempt or enchant the onlooker's gaze. But what is this inscrutable, mysterious force that draws me to you?
Nikolai Gogol
#11. They christened the child, whereat he wept and made a grimace, as though he foresaw that he was to be a titular councillor. In
Nikolai Gogol
#12. Joy in the second moment of its arrival is already less keen than in the first, is still fainter in the third, and finishes by coalescing with our normal mental state, just as the circles which the fall of a pebble forms on the surface of water, gradually die away.
Nikolai Gogol
#13. There are certain words which are nearer and dearer to a man than any others.
Nikolai Gogol
#14. April 43rd 2000
Today is the day of great triumph. There is a king of Spain. He has been found at last. That king is me. I only discovered this today. Frankly, it all came to me in a flash.
Nikolai Gogol
#15. 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
#16. Consequently he himself perceived that a knowledge of mankind would have availed him more than all the legal refinements and philosophical maxims in the world could do.
Nikolai Gogol
#17. Perfect nonsense goes on in the world. Sometimes there is no plausibility at all
Nikolai Gogol
#18. Everything resembles the truth, everything can happen to a man.
Nikolai Gogol
#19. Gambling is the great leveller. All men are equal- at cards.
Nikolai Gogol
#20. Steeds, steeds, what steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes?
Nikolai Gogol
#21. How much savage coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manners ...
Nikolai Gogol
#22. But until now I did not understand; everything was in a sort of mist. And I believe it all arose from believing that the brain is in the head. It's not so at all; it comes with the wind from the direction of the Caspian Sea.
Nikolai Gogol
#23. The Lord grant we may all be tillers of the soil.
Nikolai Gogol
#24. Here, precisely here, man imitates God: God granted Himself the work of creation, as the highest delight, and He demands that man, too, be a creator of prosperity and the harmonious course of things. And this they call dull!
Nikolai Gogol
#26. Moreover, he had a peculiar knack, as he walked along the street, of arriving beneath a window just as all sorts of rubbish were being flung out of it: hence he always bore about on his hat scraps of melon rinds and other such articles.
Nikolai Gogol
#28. In this world, people always find a way of doing what they want
Nikolai Gogol
#29. He was no stranger to compassion: his heart was open to many good impulses, though his rank often prevented their manifestation.
Nikolai Gogol
#31. The "laughter through tears of sorrow" that Pushkin noted elsewhere in his work is precisely laughter. The images it produces are too deeply ambiguous to bear any social message.
Nikolai Gogol
#32. With a true friend one experiences something in the nature of spiritual enjoyment?
Nikolai Gogol
#33. Despair at not reaching ideal perfection are among the reasons given. Again it is said
Nikolai Gogol
#34. 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
#35. The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.
Nikolai Gogol
#37. And at last he began prancing up and down and rubbing his hands, and humming and murmuring, and putting his fist to his mouth blew a march on it as on a trumpet, and even uttered aloud a few encouraging words and nicknames addressed to himself, such as "bulldog" and "little cockerel.
Nikolai Gogol
#38. Don't blame the mirror if your face is faulty.
Nikolai Gogol
#39. The more debris there is the more it will show the governor's activity.
Nikolai Gogol
#40. You see, wisdom does not come with grey hairs.
Nikolai Gogol
#42. It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry.
Nikolai Gogol
#43. 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
#44. Also, though not over-elderly, he was not over-young.
Nikolai Gogol
#45. Business was successfully concluded. But - strange is man: he was deeply mortified at being in disfavour with the very people whom he did not respect, and whose vanity and love of dress he derided.
Nikolai Gogol
#46. I think that it is one of the most refined joys of this world to interchange thoughts, feelings, and impressions." (H'm!
Nikolai Gogol
#47. We have the marvelous gift of making everything insignificant.
Nikolai Gogol
#48. (..) and they would imprint upon each other's lips such a long and languishing kiss, that a little straw cigar might have been smoked during the time it lasted.
Nikolai Gogol
#49. Even a stone has its uses, and man who is the most intelligent of all creatures must be of some use, hasn't he?
Nikolai Gogol
#50. Let me warn you, if you start chasing after views, you'll be left without bread and without views
Nikolai Gogol
#51. And in a very civil fashion did Manilov did so, even going as far as to address the man in the second person plural.
Nikolai Gogol
#52. You can do anything and smash anything in the world with a kopeck.
Nikolai Gogol
#53. Of course, Alexander the Great was a hero, but why smash the chairs?
Nikolai Gogol
#54. And so the money which to some extent may have saved the situation is spent on various means for bringing about self oblivion
Nikolai Gogol
#55. They don't listen to me, they don't hear me, they don't see me.
Nikolai Gogol
#56. Keep not money, but keep good people's company.
Nikolai Gogol
#57. 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
#58. Would he need to consider my feelings if at any point he should feel minded to blame
Nikolai Gogol
#59. It seemed that both had lately had a touch of that pain under the waistband which comes of a sedentary life.
Nikolai Gogol
#60. I've long suspected dogs of being much smarter than people; I was even certain they could speak, but there was only some kind of stubbornness in them. They're extraordinary politicians: they notice every human step.
Nikolai Gogol
#61. [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
#62. The human feelings, which had never been very deep in him, grew shallower every hour, and every day something more dropped away from the decrepit wreck.
Nikolai Gogol
#64. But yet with all this, although, of course, one may admit this, that and the other, may even ... and after all, where aren't there incongruities?
Nikolai Gogol
#65. 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
#66. - How dare you, I repeat, In disregard of all decency, call me a goose?
- I spit on your head, Ivan Ivanovich! What are you screaming so for?
Nikolai Gogol
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. Wise is the man who does not disdain any character and instead, examining him with a searching look, plumbs him to the very main-springs of his being.
Nikolai Gogol
#70. But nothing is lasting in this world. Even joy begins to fade after only one minute. Two minutes later, and it is weaker still, until finally it is swallowed up in our everyday, prosaic state of mind, just as a ripple made by a pebble gradually merges with the smooth surface of the water.
Nikolai Gogol
#71. Whatever you may say, the body depends on the soul.
Nikolai Gogol
#72. So here we are once more in the wilds, and once more we've come upon some out of the way corner. But what a wilderness, and what an out of the way corner!
Nikolai Gogol
#73. Countless as the sands of the sea are human passions.
Nikolai Gogol
#74. Every one to his taste, one man loves the priest and another the priest's wife, as the proverb says.
Nikolai Gogol
#75. Everywhere across whatever sorrows of which our life is woven, some radiant joy will gaily flash past.
Nikolai Gogol
#76. But my very latest discovery made me feel better. I had found that every rooster has his own Spain and he has it under his feathers.
Nikolai Gogol
#78. Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord.
Nikolai Gogol
#79. 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
#80. They were terrified out of their wits, the devil knows why: they take you for a brigand and a spy. And the prosecutor has died of fright; the funeral is to-morrow. Won't you be there?
Nikolai Gogol
#81. In the department of--but it is better not to mention the department. There is nothing more irritable than departments, regiments, courts of justice, and, in a word, every branch of public service.
Nikolai Gogol
#82. 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.
Nikolai Gogol
#83. Two turtle doves will show thee Where my cold ashes lie And sadly murmuring tell thee How in tears I did die
Nikolai Gogol
#84. A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe.
Nikolai Gogol
#85. The more destruction there is everywhere, the more it shows the activity of town authorities.
Nikolai Gogol
#86. 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.
Nikolai Gogol
#87. Love us dirty, for any one will love us clean.
Nikolai Gogol
#88. 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
#89. I am very fond of the theatre. If I have only a kopeck in my pocket, I always go there. Most of my fellow-officials are uneducated boors, and never enter a theatre unless one throws free tickets at their head.
Nikolai Gogol
#90. being disappeared who was protected by none, dear to none, interesting to none, and who never even attracted to himself the attention of those students of human nature who omit no opportunity of thrusting a pin through a common fly, and examining it under the microscope.
Nikolai Gogol
#91. The nose looked at the Major and frowned a little.
Nikolai Gogol
#92. A quiet room with cockroaches peeping out like prunes from every corner ...
Nikolai Gogol
#93. It
does not need much wisdom to utter words of reproof; but much wisdom
is needed to find such words as do not embitter a man's misfortune, but
encourage him, restore to him his spirit, put spurs to the horse of his
soul, refreshed by water.
Nikolai Gogol
#94. 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
#95. Nothing could be more pleasant than to live in solitude, enjoy the spectacle of nature, and occasionally read some book ...
Nikolai Gogol
#96. What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourself.
Nikolai Gogol
#97. [P]eople 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
#98. You can't imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays. The things these scribblers write!
Nikolai Gogol
#99. I must confess that I do not understand why things are so arranged, that women seize us by the nose as deftly as they do the handle of a teapot: either their hands are so constructed, or else our noses are good for nothing else.
Nikolai Gogol
#100. and what in earlier years would have brought animation to my face, arousing laughter and incessant chatter, now slips past me and my immobile lips preserve an impassive silence. Oh my youth! Oh my freshness!
Nikolai Gogol
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