Famous Ukrainians

[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

It’s not fun to live in the world,
If the heart has no one to love.

—Taras Shevchenko

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

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

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

—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.

—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.

—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.

—Nikolai Gogol

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

—Nikolai Gogol

He who has talent in him must be purer in soul than anyone else. Another will be forgiven much, but to him it will not be forgiven. A man who leaves the house in bright, festive clothes needs only one drop of mud splashed from under a wheel, and people all surround him, point their fingers at him, and talk about his slovenliness, while the same people ignore many spots on other passers-by who are wearing everyday clothes. For on everyday clothes the spots do not show.

—Nikolai Gogol

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

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

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

—Nikolai Gogol