“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 , book Dead Souls

Source: Dead Souls (1842), Chapter I

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Nikolai Gogol 39

Russian writer 1809–1852

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“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.”

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Nikolai Gogol 39

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