Nikolai Gogol > Quotes

“Îl zăpăcise pur și simplu mulțimea aceea nespus de pestriță, de parcă diavolul fărâmase lumea bucăți și le adunase apoi la loc, fără niciun sens, fără niciun rost.”
― Gogol Nikolai

“His life had already touched upon the age when everything that breathes of impulse shrinks in a man, when a powerful bow has a fainter effect on his soul and no longer twines piercing music around his heart, when the touch of beauty no longer transforms virginal powers into fire and flame, but all the burnt-out feelings become more accessible to the sound of gold, listen more attentively to its alluring music, and little by little allow it imperceptibly to lull them completely. Fame cannot give pleasure to one who did not merit it but stole it; it produces a constant tremor only in one who is worthy of it. And therefore all his feelings and longings turn toward gold.”
― Nikolai Gogol, The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

“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, The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

“(..) and they would imprint upon each other's lips such a long and languishing kiss, that a little straw cigar might have been smoked during the time it lasted.”
― Nicolai Gogol

“Manilov was pleased by these final words, but he still couldn't make sense of the deal itself, and for want of an answer, he began sucking his clay pipe so hard that it started to wheeze like a bassoon. He seemed to be trying to extract from it an opinion about this unprecedented business; but the clay pipe only wheezed and said nothing.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

“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

“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, The Overcoat and Other Short Stories

“But, along with the street lamp, everything breathes deceit. It lies all the time, this Nevsky Prospect, but most of all at the time when night heaves its dense mass upon it and sets off the white and pale yellow walls of the houses, when the whole city turns into a rumbling and brilliance, myriads of carriages tumble from the bridges, postillions shout and bounce on their horses, and the devil himself lights the lamps only so as to show everything not as it really looks.”
― Nikolai Gogol, The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

“It seemed that both had lately had a touch of that pain under the waistband which comes of a sedentary life.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

“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, The Overcoat

“There are passions that it is not for man to choose.”
― Nikolai Gogol

“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, Dead Souls

“He disregarded everything, he gave everything to art. He tirelessly visited galleries, spent whole hours standing before the works of great masters, grasped and pursued a wondrous brush. He never finished anything without testing himself several times by these great teachers and reading wordless but eloquent advice for himself in their paintings.”
― Nikolai Gogol, The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

“Consequently he himself perceived that a knowledge of mankind would have availed him more than all the legal refinements and philosophical maxims in the world could do.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

“Today an extraordinary adventure took place”
― Nikolai Gogol, Diary of a Madman

“Il disparut à jamais, cet être sans défense à qui personne n'avait jamais témoigné d'affection, ni porté le moindre intérêt, non, personne, pas même l'un de ces naturalistes toujours prêts à épingler la plus banale des mouches pour l'examiner au microscope.”
― Nikolai Gogol, The Overcoat

“He was no stranger to compassion: his heart was open to many good impulses, though his rank often prevented their manifestation.”
― Nikolai Gogol, The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

“Woman is in love with the devil.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Diary of a Madman and Other Stories

“Ала мъдър е оня, който не се гнуси от никой характер и като втренчи в него изпитателен поглед, опознае го чак до първичните му причини. Бързо се променя всичко у човека; докато се обърнеш, току видиш, че се появил вътре в него страшен червей, който самовластно обръща към себе си всички жизнени сокове.”
― Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Dead Souls

“You can always tell a pig by its grunt.”
― Nikolai Gogol, The Inspector General

“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, Diary of a Madman and Other Stories

“Do you know a Ukraine night? No, you do not know a night in the Ukraine. Gaze your full on it. The moon shines in the midst of the sky; the immeasurable vault of heaven seems to have expanded to infinity; the earth is bathed in silver light; the air is warm, voluptuous, and redolent of innumerable sweet scents. Divine night! Magical night! Motionless, but inspired with divine breath, the forests stand, casting enormous shadows and wrapped in complete darkness. Calmly and placidly sleep the lakes surrounded by dark green thickets. The virginal groves of the hawthorns and cherry-trees stretch their roots timidly into the cool water; only now and then their leaves rustle slumber; but there is a mysterious breath upon the heights. One falls into a weird and unearthly mood, and silvery apparitions rise from the depths. Divine night! Magical night! Suddenly the woods, lakes, and steppes become alive. The nightingales of the Ukraine are singing, and it seems as though the moon itself were listening to their song. The village sleeps as though under a magic spell; the cottages shine in the moonlight against the darkness of the woods behind them. The songs grow silent, and all is still. Only here and there is a glimmer of light in some small window. Some families, sitting up late, are finishing their supper at the threshholds of their houses.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Village Evenings Near Dikanka and Mirgorod

“En sus ojos se leía a menudo el ardiente deseo de tomar parte en alguna conversación interesante o de juntarse a otro grupo, pero se retenía al pensar que aquello podía parecer excesivo por su parte o demasiado familiar, y que con ello rebajaría su dignidad. Y por eso permanecía eternamente solo, en la misma actitud silenciosa, emitiendo de cuando en cuando un sonido monótono, con lo cual llegó a pasar por un hombre de lo más aburrido.”
― Nikolai Gogol, The Overcoat

“And Petersburg was left without Akakii Akakievich, as though he had never lived there. A being disappeared, and was hidden, who was protected by none, dear to none, interesting to none, who never even attracted to himself the attention of an observer of nature, who omits no opportunity of thrusting a pin through a common fly, and examining it under the microscope...”
― Nikolai Gogol, The Overcoat and Other Short Stories

“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, Taras Bulba

“You have no love for the good, then force yourself to do good, without any love for it. That will be counted an even greater merit for you than for one who does good for the love of it. Simply force yourself a few times then the love will come to you as well. Believe me, everything can be done.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

“Tell him the wedding is being prepared, only there won't be any music at our wedding: deacons will sing instead of pipes and mandolins. I won't step out to dance with my bridegroom: they will bear me away. Dark, dark will be my house: of maple wood it will be, and instead of a chimney there will be a cross on its roof!”
― Nikolai Gogol, The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

“What do you want?” in a curt hard voice, which he had practised in his room in private, and before the looking-glass, for a whole week before being raised to his present rank.”
― Nikolai Gogol, The Overcoat

“In a word, it was wild, and somehow beautiful and desolate at the same time, a work which could not have been contrived by Nature or by Art alone, but by their combined efforts only, with Nature's chisel going over the often senselessly elaborate work of man, relieving the heaviness, obliterating the vulgar symmetry and the crude lapses which reveal the laboriousness of the planner's efforts, and thus communicating a miraculous warmth to something created in cold, measured neatness and precision.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

“Still, do they really think my eyes have no equals? And my lips? My nose? And what’s so good about my raven braids? At night one might get scared by the way they wrap around my head like two serpents. No, I know I’m not beautiful at all.” But the stunning reflection caught her eye again. “Of course I’m beautiful! How happy I’ll make my husband! He’ll forget himself, he’ll choke me with kisses.” “Incredible,” Vakula said to himself, entering the house quietly. “For a whole hour she’s been staring at herself and still hasn’t had enough.”
― Nikolai Gogol, The Night Before Christmas