Nikolai Gogol Quotes

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

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.

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

I've long suspected dogs of being much smarter than people; I was even certain they could speak, but there was only some kind of stubbornness in them. They're extraordinary politicians: they notice every human step.

I am who I am and that's who I am

Also, though not over-elderly, he was not over-young.

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

Beauty works perfect miracles. All inner shortcomings in a beauty, instead of causing repugnance, become somehow extraordinarily attractive; vice itself breathes comeliness in them; but if it were to disappear, then a woman would have to be twenty times more intelligent than a man in order to inspire, if not love, at least respect.

You can do anything and smash anything in the world with a kopeck.

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

Joy in the second moment of its arrival is already less keen than in the first, is still fainter in the third, and finishes by coalescing with our normal mental state, just as the circles which the fall of a pebble forms on the surface of water, gradually die away.

But there is nothing enduring in the world, and therefore even joy in the second minute is already not as acute as in the first; in the third minute it becomes still weaker and finally merges unnoticeably with the usual condition of the soul, as a circle on the water, caused by the fall of a pebble, finally merges with the smooth surface.

Countless as the sands of the sea are human passions.

There are passions that it is not for man to choose.

Il zapacise pur si simplu multimea aceea nespus de pestrita, de parca diavolul faramase lumea bucati si le adunase apoi la loc, fara niciun sens, fara niciun rost.