Quotes from Nikolai Gogol

avaricia, la cual, como es sabido, tiene hambre de lobo: cuanto más devora, menos se sacia.

Art has the provinces in its blood. Art is provincial in principle, preserving for itself a naive, external, astonished and envious outlook.

Nuestra generación lo ve todo claramente, le asombran los errores, le produce risa la insensatez de sus antepasados, sin ver que esos anales están escritos con fuego celestial, que en ellos clama cada letra, que un dedo imperioso le señala por doquier a ella, a la generación actual. Pero nuestra generación se ríe y, dominada por la presunción y el orgullo, comienza una serie de nuevos errores, de los que más tarde también se reirán nuestros descendientes.

Nevertheless, the brother-in-law appeared to bode little danger, seeing that he had taken on board a full cargo, and was now engaged in doing nothing of a more menacing nature than picking his nose.

They are bought by some rascal of a cook whom a Frenchman has taught how to skin a tomcat and then serve it up as hare.

for there is no greater torment for a man than to desire revenge and be unable to get it.

No ma cosa devo fare, cretino, cosa devo fare? Giudica tu: perché dovrei comperare delle cose che non mi sono assolutamente necessarie?

I tell you straight that I would not eat such nastiness, even had I made it myself. Sugar a frog as much as you like, but never shall it pass MY lips. Nor would I swallow an oyster, for I know only too well what an oyster may resemble. But have some mutton, friend Chichikov. It is shoulder of mutton, and very different stuff from the mutton which they cook in noble kitchens — mutton which has been kicking about the market-place four days or more.

income, income is what these patriots want! Mother, father, God—they'll sell them all for money, the ambitious Judases! It's all ambition,

How strangely, how inconceivably our fate plays with us! Do we ever get what we desire? Do we ever achieve that for which our powers seem purposely to prepare us? Everything happens in a contrary way. To this one fate gave wonderful horses, and he drives around indifferently without ever noticing their beauty—while another, whose heart burns with the horse passion, goes on foot and contents himself with merely clicking his tongue as a trotter is led past him.

Femeile iubesc foarte mult florile, da, e o ocupa?ie foarte pl?cut?!

Everything is deception, everything is a dream, everything is not what it seems to be!

it was the fault of the hands, they and not any other part of the body had done the taking. Be that as it may, the timidity inseparable from him to begin with increased still more. Perhaps this very event was the reason why he never had any wish to enter the civil service, seeing from experience that it was not always possible to keep the lid on things.

the average Russian peasant remains active and willing (rather than lazy) only so long as he wears a shirt and a peasant's smock; but that as soon as ever he finds himself put into a German tailcoat, he becomes awkward, sluggish, indolent, disinclined to change his vest or take a bath, fond of sleeping in his clothes, and certain to breed fleas and bugs under the German apparel.

And Petersburg was left without Akakii Akakievich, as though he had never lived there.

Such is the Russian man: strong is his passion for knowing someone at least one rank above himself, and a nodding acquaintance with a count or prince is better to him than any close relations with friends.

simple old woman helped me when I got back to our parts. And how, do you think? Merely by whispering some spell on it. What do you say about these medical men, my dear sir? I think they simply fool and befuddle us. Some old woman knows twenty times better than all these medical men.

Ah! I--to you, Petrovitch, this--" It must be known that Akakiy Akakievitch expressed himself chiefly by prepositions, adverbs, and scraps of phrases which had no meaning whatever.

I'm only forty-two—the age at which service just seriously begins.

and that he was astonished that the government paid no attention to it. This gentleman was obviously one of those gentlemen who wish to mix the government into everything, even their daily quarrels with their wives.

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

I am not seeking to justify him; I am only asking you whether you think it right that an inexperienced youth who had been tempted and led away by others should have received the same sentence as the man who had taken the chief part in the affair. That is to say, although Dierpiennikov and the man Voron-Drianni received an equal measure of punishment, their CRIMINALITY was not equal.

Korku vebadan da tehlikelidir ve göz aç?p kapayana kadar yay?l?r.

no, that I just do not understand, I decidedly do not understand! But what is strangest, what is most incomprehensible of all is how authors can choose such subjects … I confess, that is utterly inconceivable, it is simply … no, no, I utterly fail to understand.