Nikolai Gogol quotes

Nikolai Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian writer, renowned for his works of satire and the grotesque. His stories, such as "Dead Souls" and "The Overcoat," profoundly influenced Russian literature and culture. He is remembered for blending humor with social critique and shaping the course of modern Russian prose. Here are 56 of his quotes:

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

Nikolai Gogol

Of course, Alexander the Great was a hero, but why smash the chairs?

Nikolai Gogol

In the course of reading he became more and more melancholy and finally became completely gloomy. When the reading was over he uttered in a voice full of sorrow: "Goodness, how sad is our Russia!"

Nikolai Gogol

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

Nikolai Gogol

I shall laugh my bitter laugh.

Nikolai Gogol

I tell everyone very plainly that I take bribes, but what kind of bribes? Why, greyhound puppies. That's a totally different matter.

Nikolai Gogol

The more destruction there is everywhere, the more it shows the activity of town authorities.

Nikolai Gogol

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

Nikolai Gogol

I am very fond of the modest manner of life of those solitary owners of remote villages, who in Little Russia are commonly called "old-fashioned," who are like tumbledown picturesque little houses, delightful in their simplicity and complete unlikeness to the new smooth buildings whose walls have not yet been discolored by the rain, whose roofs are not yet covered with green lichen, and whose porch does not display its bricks through the peeling stucco.

Nikolai Gogol

And ruined is the Cossack! He is lost for all the chivalry of the Cossacks! He will see Zaporozhye no more; nor his father's farms, nor the church of God. Ukraine will see no more the bravest of the sons who undertook to defend her. Old Taras will tear the gray hair from his head and curse the day and hour when he begot such a son to shame him.

Nikolai Gogol

The gentleman lolling back in the chaise was neither dashingly handsome nor yet unbearably ugly, neither too stout nor yet too thin; it could not be claimed he was old but he was no stripling, either. His arrival in the town created no stir and was not marked by anything out of the ordinary.

Nikolai Gogol

there is no word so perk and quick, which bursts from the heart with such spontaneity, which seethes and bubbles with such vitality, as the aptly spoken Russian word.

Nikolai Gogol

No date. The day had no date.

Nikolai Gogol

To tell the truth, I often felt uneasy when I thought of the excessive brittleness and fragility of the moon. The moon is generally repaired in Hamburg, and very imperfectly. It is done by a lame cooper, an obvious blockhead who has no idea how to do it. He took waxed thread and olive-oil-hence that pungent smell over all the earth which compels people to hold their noses. And this makes the moon so fragile that no men can live on it, but only noses. Therefore we cannot see our noses, because they are on the moon.

Nikolai Gogol

What a dreary world we live in, gentlemen.

Nikolai Gogol

However, nothing turned out as Tchitchikoff had intended.

Nikolai Gogol

All the world knows that France sneezes when England takes a pinch of snuff.

Nikolai Gogol

They insist that an author should write in the strictest, purest and noblest language: in short, they expect the Russian language to drop from the clouds, already refined, and that it should come naturally to the lips, so that all they have to do is to open their mouth and stick out their tongue. It goes without saying, of course, that the feminine half of the human species is very wise; but it must be confessed that our respected readers are even wiser.

Nikolai Gogol

The reason why Proshka wore such large boots can be explained at once: Plyushkin kept only one pair of boots for all of his servants, however numerous they were, and they always stood in the hall.

Nikolai Gogol

Apparently that does sometimes happen. Apparently even men like Chichikov are transformed into poets for a few moments in their lives: though the word "poet" would be an exaggeration here.

Nikolai Gogol

[Final lines] mother, mother, save your unhappy son! Let a tear fall on his aching head! See how they torture him! Press the poor orphan to your bosom! He has no rest in this world; they hunt him from place to place. Mother, mother, have pity on your sick child! And do you know that the Bey of Algiers has a wart under his nose?

Nikolai Gogol

Among a number of intelligent suggestions there was finally this one too, strange as it may seem, that Chichikov might be Napoleon in disguise...

Nikolai Gogol