Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol Quotes

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol delivers witty, melancholy musings on emotion and life, perfect for those who enjoy a touch of darkness.

42 quotes

1. What a dreary world we live in, gentlemen.

2. In the course of reading he 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!'

3. I shall laugh my bitter laugh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. 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?

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

12. 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.

13. Oh troika, winged troika, tell me who invented you? Surely, nowhere but among a nimble nation could you have been born in a country which has taken itself in earnest and has evenly spread far and wide over half of the globe, so that once you start counting the milestones you may count on till a speckled haze dances before your eyes... Rus, are you not similar in your headlong motion to one of those nimble troikas that none can overtake? The flying road turns into smoke under you, bridges thunder and pass, all fall back and is left behind!... And what does this awesome motion mean? What is the passing strange steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes?... Rus, whither are you speeding to? Answer me. No answer. The middle bell trills out in a dream its liquid soliloquy; the roaring air is torn to pieces and becomes wind; all things on earth fly by and other nations and states gaze askance as they step aside and give her the right of way.

14. 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?

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

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

17. 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.

18. I ask everyone in Russia to pray for me, beginning with the bishops, whose whole life is a single prayer. I ask prayers also of those who humbly do not believe in the efficacy of their prayers, as well as of those who do not believe in prayer at all and even consider it useless.

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. 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?

22. We have the marvelous gift of making everything insignificant.

23. For public opinion does not admit that lofty rapturous laughter is worthy to stand beside lofty lyrical emotion and that there isall the difference in the world between it and the antics of a clown at a fair.

24. 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.

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

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

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

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

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

30. 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.

31. 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?

32. Don't blame the mirror if your face is faulty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

39. If you have not first pondered the entire situation of the man whom you wish to help, and if you have not brought with you instructions for him to follow henceforth in leading his life, he will not receive great good from your help.

40. For a man, the soul of a woman is a preserving talisman, guarding him from moral infections; it is a power holding him to the straight path, a guide leading him back from the crooked to the straight. On the other hand, the soul of a woman can be his evil and ruin him forever.

41. Sometimes, it is enough for us to hold out a hand to receive help. It is not we who help; God helps, granting His power to the powerless word.

42. 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.