Famous Ukrainians

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

—Nikolai Gogol

What you want, you must consider the greatest of all.

— Volodymyr Vynnychenko

Ah, steeds, steeds, what steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes? Is there a sensitive ear, alert as a flame, in your every fiber? Hearing the familiar song from above, all in one accord you strain your bronze chests and, hooves barely touching the ground, turn into straight lines cleaving the air, and all inspired by God it rushes on!

—Nikolai Gogol

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

—Nikolai Gogol

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

Perfect nonsense goes on in the world. Sometimes there is no plausibility at all.

—Nikolai Gogol

But wise is the man who disdains no character, but with searching glance explores him to the root and cause of all.

—Nikolai Gogol

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

—Nikolai Gogol

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

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.

—Nikolai Gogol

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

—Nikolai Gogol

I did not die in captivity, I will not die in the wild.

—Taras Shevchenko

In the end dreams became his life, and his whole life thereafter took a strange turn: one might say he slept while waking and watched while asleep.

—Nikolai Gogol

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?

—Nikolai Gogol

Ukraine, Ukraine! My heart, my mother! When I remember your fate, my heart will weep!

—Taras Shevchenko

It is impossible to read Ukrainian history without bromine.

— Volodymyr Vynnychenko

There are a lot of evil people around, and that’s because they have no friends. Communication with people – with mom, grandmother, a dog – is the best thing that happens to you in this life. Not counting shoes and bags, of course.

—Taras Shevchenko

The world is not without good people and not without evil ones. Otherwise, how would we know which ones are good.

—Taras Shevchenko

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

—Nikolai Gogol

All fear is killed by faith.

— Volodymyr Vynnychenko

There is no cure for the slanderer’s foul language.

—Taras Shevchenko

Your home has its own truth and power and will!

—Taras Shevchenko

A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe.

—Nikolai Gogol

It is better to let people be who and what they are than to take them for who and what they are not.

—Taras Shevchenko

Keep not money, but keep good people’s company.

—Nikolai Gogol

A person’s character is best revealed when he describes the character of another person.

—Taras Shevchenko

An ordinary person expects good or bad from the outside, and a thinking person expects that from within.

—Taras Shevchenko

The life of every person is a fairy tale written with the fingers of God.

—Taras Shevchenko

In whom there is no love for the native country,
Those hearts are poor cripples.

—Taras Shevchenko

But there is nothing enduring in the world, and therefore even joy in the second minute is already not as acute as in the first; in the third minute it becomes still weaker and finally merges unnoticeably with the usual condition of the soul, as a circle on the water, caused by the fall of a pebble, finally merges with the smooth surface.

—Nikolai Gogol