Quotes from Nikolai Gogol

Countless as the sands of the sea are human passions.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

I here ask pardon of all my compatriots for everything of which I have been guilty towards them. I know that, by my ill-considered and immature works, I have brought distress to many and that I have even provoked others to attack me openly and, in general, have produced displeasure in many.

It's the most righteous, which of course is not the same thing as the most profitable.

I ask everyone in Russia to pray for me, beginning with the bishops, whose whole life is a single prayer. I ask prayers also of those who humbly do not believe in the efficacy of their prayers, as well as of those who do not believe in prayer at all and even consider it useless.

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

Wise is the man who does not disdain any character and instead, examining him with a searching look, plumbs him to the very main-springs of his being.

If you have not first pondered the entire situation of the man whom you wish to help, and if you have not brought with you instructions for him to follow henceforth in leading his life, he will not receive great good from your help.

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.

[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.

Sometimes, it is enough for us to hold out a hand to receive help. It is not we who help; God helps, granting His power to the powerless word.

There are certain words which are nearer and dearer to a man than any others.

Let my body be delivered to the earth without attention to the place where it lies; nothing should be associated with my dusty remains. Shame on him who draws any attention to a rotted flesh that is already no longer mine: he is worshipping the worms nibbling it.

I am a writer, and the duty of a writer is not only to furnish pleasant pursuits for the mind and taste: he will be held accountable if things useful to the soul are not disseminated by his works and if nothing remains after him as a precept for mankind.

Russia! Russia... Everything in you is open, desolate and level; your squat towns barely protrude in the midst of the plains like dots, like counters; there is nothing to tempt or enchant the onlooker's gaze. But what is this inscrutable, mysterious force that draws me to you?

Everything resembles the truth, everything can happen to a man.

The Lord grant we may all be tillers of the soil.

The higher truths are, the more cautious one must be with them; otherwise, they are converted into common things, and common things are not believed.