Quotes from Nikolai Gogol

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

The influence of a woman can be very great, especially now, in the present order or disorder of society, in which there is a kind of spiritual chill, a kind of moral fatigue, demanding reanimation. In order to produce this reanimation, the cooperation of woman is indispensable.

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

The experience of ages has shown that a man who works on the land is purer, nobler, higher, and more moral... Agriculture should be at the basis of everything. That's my idea.

Countless as the sands of sea are human passions, and not all of them are alike, and all of them, base and noble alike, are at first obedient to man and only later on become his terrible masters.

Man is such a wondrous being that it is never possible to count up all his merits at once. The more you study him, the more new particulars appear, and their description would be endless.

They're thinking of turning the peasant into an educated man. Why, first of all they should make him a good and prosperous farmer and then he'll learn all that is necessary for him to know.

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

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

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

I shall think soon that what people say is true: every woman is possessed by her own peculiar devil of curiosity

For a man, the soul of a woman is a preserving talisman, guarding him from moral infections; it is a power holding him to the straight path, a guide leading him back from the crooked to the straight. On the other hand, the soul of a woman can be his evil and ruin him forever.

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

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

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

Two turtle doves will show theeWhere my cold ashes lieAnd sadly murmuring tell theeHow in tears I did die

Countless as the sands of the sea are human passions.

I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through the tears unseen and unknown by anyone.

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

We have the marvelous gift of making everything insignificant.

Two turtle doves will show thee Where my cold ashes lie And sadly murmuring tell thee How in tears I did die

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

There are occasions when a woman, no matter how weak and impotent in character she may be in comparison with a man, will yet suddenly become not only harder than any man, but even harder than anything and everything in the world.

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