Nikolai Gogol Quotes (39 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Works

Viy

Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol: 39 quotes 5 likes

Famous Nikolai Gogol Quotes

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

Nikolai Gogol book The Government Inspector

Epigraph; said of a history teacher who smashed a chair in his excitement when discussing the conqueror
The Inspector General (1836)

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

Nikolai Gogol book The Government Inspector

Epigraph
The Inspector General (1836)

“[Women's] boarding schools, as we know, hold the three principal subjects which constitute the basis of human virtue to be the French language (a thing indispensable to the happiness of married life), piano-playing (a thing wherewith to beguile a husband’s leisure moments), and that particular department of housewifery which is comprised in the knitting of purses and other “surprises.” Nevertheless changes and improvements have begun to take place, since things now are governed more by the personal inclinations and idiosyncracies of the keepers of such establishments. For instance, in some seminaries the regimen places piano-playing first, and the French language second, and then the above department of housewifery; while in other seminaries the knitting of “surprises” heads the list, and then the French language, and then the playing of pianos—so diverse are the systems in force!”

Nikolai Gogol book Dead Souls

Vol. 1, ch. 2
Dead Souls (1842)

“The sergeant's widow told you a lie when she said I flogged her. I never flogged her. She flogged herself.”

Nikolai Gogol book The Government Inspector

Act IV, sc. xv
The Inspector General (1836)

“Oh troika, winged troika, tell me who invented you? Surely, nowhere but among a nimble nation could you have been born in a country which has taken itself in earnest and has evenly spread far and wide over half of the globe, so that once you start counting the milestones you may count on till a speckled haze dances before your eyes… Rus, are you not similar in your headlong motion to one of those nimble troikas that none can overtake? The flying road turns into smoke under you, bridges thunder and pass, all fall back and is left behind!… And what does this awesome motion mean? What is the passing strange steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes?… Rus, whither are you speeding to? Answer me. No answer. The middle bell trills out in a dream its liquid soliloquy; the roaring air is torn to pieces and becomes wind; all things on earth fly by and other nations and states gaze askance as they step aside and give her the right of way.”

Nikolai Gogol book Dead Souls

Vol. I, ch. 11
Dead Souls (1842)

“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 book The Government Inspector

Act I, sc. i
The Inspector General (1836)

Nikolai Gogol Quotes about the world

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

Nikolai Gogol book Diary of a Madman

Diary of a Madman (1835)

“What a dreary world we live in, gentlemen.”

Nikolai Gogol

How the Two Ivans Quarrelled (1835)

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

Nikolai Gogol book Dead Souls

Vol. I, ch. 5
Dead Souls (1842)

“As it is so strangely ordained in this world, what is amusing will turn into being gloomy, if you stand too long before it, and then God knows what ideas may not stray into the mind”

Nikolai Gogol book Dead Souls

Vol. I, ch. 3
Dead Souls (1842)
Context: As it is so strangely ordained in this world, what is amusing will turn into being gloomy, if you stand too long before it, and then God knows what ideas may not stray into the mind... Why is it that even in moments of unthinking, careless gaiety a different and strange mood comes upon one?

“[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 book Diary of a Madman

Diary of a Madman (1835)

Nikolai Gogol Quotes about life

“And for a long time yet, led by some wondrous power, 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.”

Nikolai Gogol book Dead Souls

Vol. I, ch. 7
Dead Souls (1842)

“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

"Old World Landowners" (1835)

“…it's not my job to preach a sermon. Art is anyhow a homily. My job is to speak in living images, not in arguments. I must exhibit life full-face, not discuss life.”

Nikolai Gogol

A letter to Zhukovsky, January 1848, quoted in Sculpting in Time (p49) by Andrei Tarkovsky