Quotes from Nikolai Gogol

Yes, readers of this book, none of you really care to see humanity revealed in its nakedness. "Why should we do so?" you say. "What would be the use of it? Do we not know for ourselves that human life contains much that is gross and contemptible? Do we not with our own eyes have to look upon much that is anything but comforting? Far better would it be if you would put before us what is comely and attractive, so that we might forget ourselves a little.

His whole being, his whole life was awakened in one instant, as if youth returned to him, as if the extinguished sparks of talent blazed up again. The blindfold suddenly fell from his eyes. God! to ruin the best years of his youth so mercilessly; to destroy, to extinguish the spark of fire that had perhaps flickered in his breast, that perhaps would have developed by now into greatness and beauty, that perhaps would also have elicited tears of amazement and gratitude!

Non è panno questo, ma gloria: come soffia un po' di vento vola via.

Well, in this case,' said Chichikov, 'I haven't lied by even this much,' and with his thumb he marked off the very tip of his little finger. 'You Jesuit, you Jesuit! I'll bet you anything you're talking rot!' 'Listen, this is insulting! What's going on, anyway? Why do you think I have to be lying?

Godine 2000, aprila 43.; Martobra 86. Izme?u dana i no?i; Datum nikoji Dan je bio bez datuma; Datuma se ne se?am. Meseca tako?e nije bilo. Bilo je vrag bi ga znao šta.; Datum 1.; Madrid Februarij trideseti; Januar iste te godine, koji je nastupio posle februara; 25. datum; Datum 34 godine Februar 349.

Entre las penas con que nuestra vida está tejida, luce siempre un chispazo de alegría.

They were terrified out of their wits, the devil knows why: they take you for a brigand and a spy. And the prosecutor has died of fright; the funeral is to-morrow. Won't you be there?

And at last he began prancing up and down and rubbing his hands, and humming and murmuring, and putting his fist to his mouth blew a march on it as on a trumpet, and even uttered aloud a few encouraging words and nicknames addressed to himself, such as "bulldog" and "little cockerel.

But until now I did not understand; everything was in a sort of mist. And I believe it all arose from believing that the brain is in the head. It's not so at all; it comes with the wind from the direction of the Caspian Sea.

Human problems are difficult things to solve. Sometimes a man may be drawn into a vicious circle, so that, having once entered it, he ceases to be himself.

Suddenly he stopped as if rooted outside the doors of one house; before his eyes an inexplicable phenomenon occurred: a carriage stopped at the entrance; the door opened; a gentleman in a uniform jumped out, hunching over, and ran up the stairs. What was Kovalev's horror as well as amazement when he recognized him as his own nose!

I'd like to peek into the drawing room, where you sometimes see only an open door into yet another room beyond the drawing room.

On first speaking to the man, his ingratiating smile, his flaxen hair, and his blue eyes would lead one to say, "What a pleasant, good-tempered fellow he seems!" yet during the next moment or two one would feel inclined to say nothing at all, and, during the third moment, only to say, "The devil alone knows what he is!

would he need to consider my feelings if at any point he should feel minded to blame

P]eople think that the human brain is in the head. Nothing of the sort; it is carried by the wind from the Caspian Sea.

Really it tires one to hear you. How come you always to be so cheerful?" "And how come YOU always to be so gloomy?" retorted the host. "How, you ask? Simply because I am so.

Woman is in love with the devil.

However foolish be a madman's words, they may yet prove sufficient to sow doubt in the minds of saner individuals.

This police commissary was a great patron of all the arts and industries; but what he liked above everything else was a cheque. "That's the thing," he used to say, "to which it is not easy to find an equivalent; it requires no food, it does not take up much room, it stays in one's pocket, and if it falls, it is not broken.

In conclusion, the visitor took out a cambric pocket-handkerchief, and sneezed into it with a vehemence wholly new to Tientietnikov's experience. In fact, the sneeze rather resembled the note which, at times, the trombone of an orchestra appears to utter not so much from its proper place on the platform as from the immediate neighbourhood of the listener's ear.

Take any man you like of the persons whom you thus term rascals. That man none the less remains a human being. That being so, how can one refuse to defend him when all the time one knows that half his errors have been committed through ignorance and stupidity? Each of us commits faults with every step that we take; each of us entails unhappiness upon others with every breath that we draw—and that although we may have no evil intention whatever in our minds.

What a strange creature man is! He does not believe in God, but he does believe that if the bridge of is nose itches he is surely going to die;

He was an artist of rare ability, a self-taught artist, without teachers or schools, principles and rules, carried away only by the thirst for perfection, and treading a path indicated by his own instincts, for reasons unknown, perchance, even to himself. Through some lofty and secret instinct he perceived the presence of a soul in every object.

After a brief postprandial snooze he ordered the necessaries for washing, and spent an extraordinarily long time lathering both cheeks with soap, while distending each in turn from the inside with his tongue. Then, pulling the towel off the inn-servant's shoulder, he used it to rub every part of his plump face, beginning behind his ears, after twice snorting straight into the inn-servant's face as a preliminary.