Nikolai Gogol
Everywhere across whatever sorrows of which our life is woven, some radiant joy will gaily flash past.Collection: Moving
Countless as the sands of the sea are human passions.Collection: Inspirational
Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord.Collection: Beauty
Let me warn you, if you start chasing after views, you'll be left without bread and without views.Collection: Wisdom
There are certain words which are nearer and dearer to a man than any others.Collection: Communication
The experience of ages has shown that a man who works on the land is purer, nobler, higher, and more moral... Agriculture should be at the basis of everything. That's my idea.Collection: Experience
It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry.
Wise is the man who does not disdain any character and instead, examining him with a searching look, plumbs him to the very main-springs of his being.
Atheists have not produced so much evil as hypocrites have produced, or even simply those who preached God without being prepared for Him, daring to pronounce His name with unsanctified lips.
It's the most righteous, which of course is not the same thing as the most profitable.
You can't imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays.
Russia! Russia... Everything in you is open, desolate and level; your squat towns barely protrude in the midst of the plains like dots, like counters; there is nothing to tempt or enchant the onlooker's gaze. But what is this inscrutable, mysterious force that draws me to you?
Whatever you may say, the body depends on the soul.
The Lord grant we may all be tillers of the soil.
They're thinking of turning the peasant into an educated man. Why, first of all they should make him a good and prosperous farmer and then he'll learn all that is necessary for him to know.
I am a writer, and the duty of a writer is not only to furnish pleasant pursuits for the mind and taste: he will be held accountable if things useful to the soul are not disseminated by his works and if nothing remains after him as a precept for mankind.
If you have not first pondered the entire situation of the man whom you wish to help, and if you have not brought with you instructions for him to follow henceforth in leading his life, he will not receive great good from your help.
Let my body be delivered to the earth without attention to the place where it lies; nothing should be associated with my dusty remains. Shame on him who draws any attention to a rotted flesh that is already no longer mine: he is worshipping the worms nibbling it.
The influence of a woman can be very great, especially now, in the present order or disorder of society, in which there is a kind of spiritual chill, a kind of moral fatigue, demanding reanimation. In order to produce this reanimation, the cooperation of woman is indispensable.
I ask everyone in Russia to pray for me, beginning with the bishops, whose whole life is a single prayer. I ask prayers also of those who humbly do not believe in the efficacy of their prayers, as well as of those who do not believe in prayer at all and even consider it useless.
Sometimes, it is enough for us to hold out a hand to receive help. It is not we who help; God helps, granting His power to the powerless word.
We ought to thank God for that. Yes, the man who tills the land is more worthy of respect than any.
I here ask pardon of all my compatriots for everything of which I have been guilty towards them. I know that, by my ill-considered and immature works, I have brought distress to many and that I have even provoked others to attack me openly and, in general, have produced displeasure in many.
For a man, the soul of a woman is a preserving talisman, guarding him from moral infections; it is a power holding him to the straight path, a guide leading him back from the crooked to the straight. On the other hand, the soul of a woman can be his evil and ruin him forever.
The higher truths are, the more cautious one must be with them; otherwise, they are converted into common things, and common things are not believed.
The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.Collection: Sad
Nothing could be more pleasant than to live in solitude, enjoy the spectacle of nature, and occasionally read some book.Collection: Book
Don't blame the mirror if your face is faulty.Collection: Mirrors
I am who I am and that's who I amCollection: Life
However stupid a fools words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man.Collection: Stupid
I saw that I'd get nowhere on the straight path, and that to go crookedly was straighter.Collection: Path
A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe.Collection: Cutting
Keep not money, but keep good people's company.Collection: People
We have the marvelous gift of making everything insignificant.Collection: Marvelous
He who has talent in him must be purer in soul than anyone else. Another will be forgiven much, but to him it will not be forgiven. A man who leaves the house in bright, festive clothes needs only one drop of mud splashed from under a wheel, and people all surround him, point their fingers at him, and talk about his slovenliness, while the same people ignore many spots on other passers-by who are wearing everyday clothes. For on everyday clothes the spots do not show.Collection: Men
Perfect nonsense goes on in the world. Sometimes there is no plausibility at allCollection: Perfect
The current generation now sees everything clearly, it marvels at the errors, it laughs at the folly of its ancestors, not seeing that this chronicle is all overscored by divine fire, that every letter of it cries out, that from everywhere the piercing finger is pointed at it, at this current generation; but the current generation laughs and presumptuously, proudly begins a series of new errors, at which their descendants will also laugh afterwards.Collection: Fire
How much savage coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manners.Collection: Savages
In the end dreams became his life, and his whole life thereafter took a strange turn: one might say he slept while waking and watched while asleep.Collection: Dream
They don’t listen to me, they don’t hear me, they don’t see me.Collection: Listen To Me
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.Collection: Fall
There are people who exist in this world not like entities but like the speckles or spots on something.Collection: People
Gambling is the great leveller. All men are equal- at cards.Collection: Men
Of course, Alexander the Great was a hero, but why smash the chairs?Collection: Hero
...and sank into the profound slumber which comes only to such fortunate folk as are troubled neither with mosquitoes nor fleas nor excessive activity of brain.Collection: Profound
This was not the old Chichikov. This was some wreckage of the old Chichikov. The inner state of his soul might be compared to a demolished building, which has been demolished so that from it a new one could be built; but the new one has not been started yet, because the infinitive plan has not yet come from the architect and the workers are left in perplexity.Collection: Soul
Everything resembles the truth, everything can happen to a man.Collection: Men
Countless are, as the sand in the sea, the deep desires of men, and none resembles the other, and all of them, whether shameful, or great, in the beginning are obedient, but later become terrible masters over him.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Laughter
In the course of reading he [Alexander Pushkin] became more and more melancholy and finally became completely gloomy. When the reading was over he uttered in a voice full of sorrow: "Goodness, how sad is our Russia!"Collection: Russia