231 Quotes by Nikolai Gogol

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.

Everywhere, despite all the sorrows from which our lives are woven, there will flash a glittering dream of joy, just like a brilliant carriage with gold trappings, fairytale steeds, sparkling windows which suddenly appears from nowhere and flashes past some wretched backwater village, which has never seen anything other than farm carts, and for a long time after the peasants remain standing, mouths agape and caps still doffed, although the wondrous carriage has long since passed from view

By God, the point of the thing is not in this property, which can be confiscated, but in that which no one can steal and carry off! ... Forget this noisy world and all its seductive fancies; let it forget you, too. There is no peace in it. You see: everything in it is either an enemy, a tempter, or a traitor.

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

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

Two turtle doves will show theeWhere my cold ashes lieAnd sadly murmuring tell theeHow in tears I did die

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

But, along with the street lamp, everything breathes deceit. It lies all the time, this Nevsky Prospect, but most of all at the time when night heaves its dense mass upon it and sets off the white and pale yellow walls of the houses, when the whole city turns into a rumbling and brilliance, myriads of carriages tumble from the bridges, postillions shout and bounce on their horses, and the devil himself lights the lamps only so as to show everything not as it really looks.

Countless as the sands of the sea are human passions.