Nikolai Gogol Quotes

I am who I am and that's who I am

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

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

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

The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.

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

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

Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord.

We have the marvelous gift of making everything insignificant.

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

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

The current generation now sees everything clearly, it marvels at the errors, it laughs at the folly of its ancestors, not seeing that this chronicle is all overscored by divine fire, that every letter of it cries out, that from everywhere the piercing finger is pointed at it, at this current generation; but the current generation laughs and presumptuously, proudly begins a series of new errors, at which their descendants will also laugh afterwards.

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

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.

Gambling is the great leveller. All men are equal- at cards.

Everywhere across whatever sorrows of which our life is woven, some radiant joy will gaily flash past.

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

They don’t listen to me, they don’t hear me, they don’t see me.

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

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

How much savage coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manners.

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.

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.

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

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.