The collection / 42 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01Undated

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.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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02Undated

The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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03Undated

Like all of us sinners, General Betrishchev was endowed with many virtues and many defects. Both the one and the other were scattered through him in a sort of picturesque disorder. Self-sacrifice, magnanimity in decisive moments, courage, intelligence--and with all that, a generous mixture of self-love, ambition, vanity, petty personal ticklishness, and a good many of those things which a man simply cannot do without.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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04Undated

You see, wisdom does not come with grey hairs.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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05Undated

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

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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06Undated

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

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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07Undated

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

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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08Undated

I must confess that I do not understand why things are so arranged, that women seize us by the nose as deftly as they do the handle of a teapot: either their hands are so constructed, or else our noses are good for nothing else.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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09Undated

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

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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10Undated

I've long suspected dogs of being much smarter than people; I was even certain they could speak, but there was only some kind of stubbornness in them. They're extraordinary politicians: they notice every human step.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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11Undated

Countless as the sands of the sea are human passions.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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12Undated

But the future is unknown, and stands before a man like autumnal fogs rising from the swamps; birds fly foolishly up and down in it with flapping wings, never recognizing each other, the dove seeing not the vulture, nor the vulture the dove, and no one knowing how far he may be flying from destruction.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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13Undated

A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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14Undated

Do we ever get what we really want? Do we ever achieve what our powers have ostensibly equipped us for? No: everything works by contraries.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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15Undated

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.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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16Undated

He was no stranger to compassion: his heart was open to many good impulses, though his rank often prevented their manifestation.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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17Undated

Ah,steeds,steeds,what is steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes? Is there a sensitive ear, alert as a flame, in your every fiber? Hearing the familiar song from above, all in one accord you strain your bronze chests and, hooves barely touching the ground, turn into straight lines cleaving the air, and all inspired by God it rushes on!

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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18Undated

That same moment he ordered the hateful portrait taken out. But that did not calm his inner agitation: all his feelings and all his being were shaken to their depths, and he came to know that terrible torment which, by way of a striking exception, sometimes occurs in nature, when a weak talent strains to show itself on too grand a scale and fails; that torment which gives birth to great things in a youth, but, in passing beyond the border of dream, turns into a fruitless yearning; that dreadful torment which makes a man capable of terrible evildoing.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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19Undated

April 43rd 2000Today is the day of great triumph. There is a king of Spain. He has been found at last. That king is me. I only discovered this today. Frankly, it all came to me in a flash.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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20Undated

The human feelings, which had never been very deep in him, grew shallower every hour, and every day something more dropped away from the decrepit wreck.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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21Undated

This gentleman evidently belonged to the category of those people who wish the Government to interfere in everything, even in their daily quarrels with their wives.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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22Undated

Woman is in love with the devil.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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23Undated

Beauty works perfect miracles. All inner shortcomings in a beauty, instead of causing repugnance, become somehow extraordinarily attractive; vice itself breathes comeliness in them; but if it were to disappear, then a woman would have to be twenty times more intelligent than a man in order to inspire, if not love, at least respect.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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24Undated

Itdoes not need much wisdom to utter words of reproof; but much wisdomis needed to find such words as do not embitter a man's misfortune, butencourage him, restore to him his spirit, put spurs to the horse of hissoul, refreshed by water.

Nikolai Gogol / quote

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