Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (1809-1852) was a Russian novelist, short story writer and playwright of Ukrainian origin. Gogol was one of the first to use the technique of the grotesque, in works such as “The Nose”, “Viy”, “The Overcoat”, and “Nevsky Prospekt.” [Українська] [Русский]
Nikolai Gogol Quotes
Gambling is the great leveller. All men are equal – at cards.
—Nikolai Gogol
I shall laugh my bitter laugh.
—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.
—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.
—Nikolai Gogol
Also, though not over-elderly, he was not over-young.
—Nikolai Gogol
At the end of the table, the secretary was reading the decision in some case, but in such a mournful and monotonous voice, that the condemned man himself would have fallen asleep while listening to it. The judge, no doubt, would have been the first of all to do so, had he not entered into an engrossing conversation while it was going on.
—Nikolai Gogol
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.
—Nikolai Gogol
You can’t imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays.
—Nikolai Gogol
Two turtle doves will show thee Where my cold ashes lie And sadly murmuring tell thee How in tears I did die
—Nikolai Gogol
Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord.
—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
[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
Don’t blame the mirror if your face is faulty.
—Nikolai Gogol
The Lord grant we may all be tillers of the soil.
—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.
—Nikolai Gogol
The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.
—Nikolai Gogol
What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourself.
—Nikolai Gogol
They don’t listen to me, they don’t hear me, they don’t see me.
—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
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
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
There are people who exist in this world not like entities but like the speckles or spots on something.
—Nikolai Gogol
There are certain words which are nearer and dearer to a man than any others.
—Nikolai Gogol
Everything resembles the truth, everything can happen to a man.
—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.
—Nikolai Gogol
The more debris there is the more it will show the governor’s activity.
—Nikolai Gogol
Everywhere across whatever sorrows of which our life is woven, some radiant joy will gaily flash past.
—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!”
—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.
—Nikolai Gogol
How much savage coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manners.
—Nikolai Gogol