“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?

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Nikolai Gogol 39
Russian writer 1809–1852

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