Nikolai Gogol Quotes

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.

What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourselves!

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

I tell everyone very plainly that I take bribes, but what kind of bribes? Why, greyhound puppies. That's a totally different matter.

The more destruction there is everywhere, the more it shows the activity of town authorities.

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

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

[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?

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

To tell the truth, I often felt uneasy when I thought of the excessive brittleness and fragility of the moon. The moon is generally repaired in Hamburg, and very imperfectly. It is done by a lame cooper, an obvious blockhead who has no idea how to do it. He took waxed thread and olive-oil—hence that pungent smell over all the earth which compels people to hold their noses. And this makes the moon so fragile that no men can live on it, but only noses. Therefore we cannot see our noses, because they are on the moon.

[P]eople think that the human brain is in the head. Nothing of the sort; it is carried by the wind from the Caspian Sea.

No date. The day had no date.

Marchember 86. Between day and night.

The year 2000: April 43rd.—To-day is a day of splendid triumph. Spain has a king; he has been found, and I am he.

Dogs are clever fellows; they know all about politics [...]