Top 100 Nikolai Quotes
#1. Control and violence that is best reflected in the state, are evil in themselves. In this knowledge lies the great truth of anarchism.
Nikolai A. Berdyaev
#2. Until the Crusades Islam was indistinguishable from Judaism and ... only then did it receive its independent character, while Muhammad and the first Caliphs are mythical figures.
Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov
#3. 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
#4. Everywhere across whatever sorrows of which our life is woven, some radiant joy will gaily flash past.
Nikolai Gogol
#5. Every one to his taste, one man loves the priest and another the priest's wife, as the proverb says.
Nikolai Gogol
#6. In our parts such characters sometimes turn up that, however many years ago you met them, you can never recall them without an inner trembling.
Nikolai Leskov
#7. Countless as the sands of the sea are human passions.
Nikolai Gogol
#8. You can't rule out the impossible, because you never know which of your assumptions about what was possible might turn out, in the real universe, to be false.
Orson Scott Card
#9. 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
#10. Creativeness is liberation from slavery. Man is free when he finds himself in a state of creative activity. Creativeness leads to ecstasy of the moment. The products of creativeness are within time, but the creative act itself lies outside time.
Nikolai Berdyaev
#11. Whatever you may say, the body depends on the soul.
Nikolai Gogol
#12. We see now that infringement of freedom is necessary with regard to the opponents of the revolution. At a time of revolution we cannot allow freedom for the enemies of the people and of the revolution. That is a surely clear, irrefutable conclusion.
Nikolai Bukharin
#13. It is hereby certified that the bearer, Nikolai Ivanovich, spent the
said night at Satan's ball, having been summoned there in the capacity of a means of transportation ... make a parenthesis, Hella, in the parenthesis put "hog". Signed - Behemoth.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#14. We find the most terrible form of atheism, not in the militant and passionate struggle against the idea of God himself, but in the practical atheism of everyday living, in indifference and torpor. We often encounter these forms of atheism among those who are formally Christians.
Nikolai Berdyaev
#15. Freedom is the power to create out of nothing, the power of the spirit to create out of itself.
Nikolai Berdyaev
#16. And when there are no more classes, when society is socially democratized and unified, then there will be revealed in all its metaphysical depths the never-ending tragedy of the conflict between personality and society.
Nikolai A. Berdyaev
#17. I think one of the reasons [Nikolai] Medtner hasn't had a chance is that his music needs very, very committed performances. If you play his works passively, the juice of his music is really not going to be extracted - it's simply not going to come out.
Marc-Andre Hamelin
#18. 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
#19. I had no idea of the historical evolution of the civilized world's music and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. The mind is a strange thing: it works in secret. Oftentimes the most important decisions in life are made while you're not paying attention.
Nikolai Grozni
#23. 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
#24. - 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
#25. You can do anything and smash anything in the world with a kopeck.
Nikolai Gogol
#26. 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
#30. 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
#31. Nikolai stroked her cheek, then wrapped her in his embrace. "You're safe," he said tenderly beside her ear. "I've got you, and I'm going to keep you safe.
Lara Adrian
#32. [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
#33. 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
#34. It seemed that both had lately had a touch of that pain under the waistband which comes of a sedentary life.
Nikolai Gogol
#35. Would he need to consider my feelings if at any point he should feel minded to blame
Nikolai Gogol
#36. 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
#37. The Russian yearning for the meaning of life is the major theme of our literature, and this is the real point of our intelligentsia's existence.
Nikolai A. Berdyaev
#38. The distinction between the things of Caesar and the things of God is constantly being erased in our fallen world, and this always indicates that the Kingdom of Caesar is attempting to swallow up the Kingdom of God.
Nikolai A. Berdyaev
#39. Keep not money, but keep good people's company.
Nikolai Gogol
#40. They don't listen to me, they don't hear me, they don't see me.
Nikolai Gogol
#41. Nikolai's a badass Russian. Badass Russians only have three emotions: revenge, depression, and vodka.
Larry Correia
#42. 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
#43. Orchestration is part of the very soul of the work. A work is thought out in terms of the orchestra, certain tone-colors being inseparable from it in the mind of its creator and native to it from the hour of its birth.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
#44. Of course, Alexander the Great was a hero, but why smash the chairs?
Nikolai Gogol
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. I'm used to being the center of attention wherever I go. I've been told I could charm the shoes off a racehorse midstride, and yet you seem impervious.
Leigh Bardugo
#49. You can't imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays. The things these scribblers write!
Nikolai Gogol
#50. [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
#51. I hereby certify that the bearer of this note, Nikolai Ivanovich, spent the night in question at Satan's ball, having been lured there in a transportational capacity ... Hella, put in parentheses! And write 'hog.' Signed- Behemoth.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#52. The Church is simply the path of history, and not the actual kingdom of God.
Nikolai Berdyaev
#53. What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourself.
Nikolai Gogol
#54. Nothing could be more pleasant than to live in solitude, enjoy the spectacle of nature, and occasionally read some book ...
Nikolai Gogol
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. A quiet room with cockroaches peeping out like prunes from every corner ...
Nikolai Gogol
#58. Baghra," Nikolai said, "how are you this evening?"
"Still old and blind," she snarled.
"And charming," Nikolai drawled. "Never forget charming."
"Whelp."
"Hag."
"What do you want, pest?
Leigh Bardugo
#59. The nose looked at the Major and frowned a little.
Nikolai Gogol
#60. 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
#62. Objectification is above all exteriorization, the alienation of spirit from itself.
Nikolai Berdyaev
#63. He hesitated. Don't you see? You're like a favorite painting. A found masterpiece, I loved both for things remembered and those newly discovered.
Amanda Gray
#64. The King scowled. "She is a traitor to the crown. I want her head."
To my surprise, Genya said to Nikolai, "I will take my punishment if he takes his.
Leigh Bardugo
#65. You know the problem with heroes and saints, Nikolai?" I asked as I closed the book's cover and headed for the door. "They always end up dead.
Leigh Bardugo
#66. Nikolai felt his heart breaking at the unfairness of a universe which let good people suffer while evildoers walked free and unpunished.
Adele Hamaludin
#67. Krasivaya. It means beautiful, but with strength. Unique.
Ruta Sepetys
#68. The will to originality is not the will to be peculiar and unlike anybody else; it means the desire to derive one's consciousness from its primary source.
Nikolai Berdyaev
#69. 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
#70. I don't know why people are so afraid of dying. It only takes a moment.
Nikolai Grozni
#71. Love us dirty, for any one will love us clean.
Nikolai Gogol
#72. 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
#73. The more destruction there is everywhere, the more it shows the activity of town authorities.
Nikolai Gogol
#74. It is noteworthy that at a time when every religious sanction of authority has vanished, we live in a very authoritarian epoch.
Nikolai A. Berdyaev
#75. In sex we have the source of man's true connection with the cosmos and of his servile dependence. The categories of sex, male and female, are cosmic categories, not merely anthropological categories.
Nikolai Berdyaev
#76. Whatever you find, you also find the fear that you may lose it. Whatever you fall in love with fills you with the sorrow of its loss...
St. Nikolai Velimirovich
#77. A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe.
Nikolai Gogol
#78. Conscience is the spiritual, supernatural principle in man, and it is not of social origin at all. It is rather the perversion and confusion of conscience that is of social origin.
Nikolai Berdyaev
#79. Two turtle doves will show thee Where my cold ashes lie And sadly murmuring tell thee How in tears I did die
Nikolai Gogol
#80. 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
#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. 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
#83. 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
#84. What terrible harm Wagner did by interspersing his pages of genius with harmonic and modulatory outrages to which both young and old are gradually becoming accustomed and which have procreated d'Indy and Richard Strauss.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
#85. Home is simply a place where your friends wait for you to come back.
Nikolai Grozni
#86. Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord.
Nikolai Gogol
#87. You'll still make a great king."
"Of course I will," he scoffed. "I'm melancholy, not daft.
Leigh Bardugo
#88. 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
#89. You see, wisdom does not come with grey hairs.
Nikolai Gogol
#90. So great is the worth of Dostoevsky that to have produced him is by itself sufficient justification for the existence of the Russian people in the world: and he will bear witness for his country-men at the last judgement of the nations.
Nikolai Berdyaev
#91. 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
#93. 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
#94. The Lord grant we may all be tillers of the soil.
Nikolai Gogol
#95. We put on our best clothes and die like heroes.
Leigh Bardugo
#96. Creativity is the supreme mystery of life, the mystery of the appearance of something new, hitherto unknown, derived from nothing, proceeding from nothing, born of nothing other ...
Nikolai Berdyaev
#97. 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
#99. How much savage coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manners ...
Nikolai Gogol
#100. In every artistic activity a new world is created, the cosmos, a world enlightened and free.
Nikolai Berdyaev
