Top 200 Nikolai Gogol Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Fear is more contagious than the plague and is instantly communicated.”

— Nikolai Gogol

152. “Dreadful and fearsome is the old age which will come, for it gives nothing back, nothing in return!”

— Nikolai Gogol

153. “The devil take those who first invented balls!” was his reflection. “Who derives any real pleasure from them? In this province there exist want and scarcity everywhere: yet folk go in for balls! How absurd, too, were those overdressed women! One of them must have had a thousand roubles on her back, and all acquired at the expense of the overtaxed peasant, or, worse still, at that of the conscience of her neighbour.”

— Nikolai Gogol

154. “They are bought by some rascal of a cook whom a Frenchman has taught how to skin a tomcat and then serve it up as hare.”

— Nikolai Gogol

155. “Only when he died did they find out, with regret, that the Public Prosecutor had had a soul, although out of modesty he had never flaunted it.”

— Nikolai Gogol

156. “Yes, readers of this book, none of you really care to see humanity revealed in its nakedness. “Why should we do so?” you say. “What would be the use of it? Do we not know for ourselves that human life contains much that is gross and contemptible? Do we not with our own eyes have to look upon much that is anything but comforting? Far better would it be if you would put before us what is comely and attractive, so that we might forget ourselves a little.”

— Nikolai Gogol

157. “Always a friend or a comrade may fail you, and be the first to desert you in a time of adversity; but never will a KOPECK fail you, whatever may be your plight.”

— Nikolai Gogol

158. “Instantly Nozdrev burst into a laugh compassable only by a healthy man in whose head every tooth still remains as white as sugar. By this I mean the laugh of quivering cheeks, the laugh which causes a neighbour who is sleeping behind double doors three rooms away to leap from his bed and exclaim with distended eyes, “Hullo! Something HAS upset him!”

— Nikolai Gogol

159. “I am not seeking to justify him; I am only asking you whether you think it right that an inexperienced youth who had been tempted and led away by others should have received the same sentence as the man who had taken the chief part in the affair. That is to say, although Dierpiennikov and the man Voron-Drianni received an equal measure of punishment, their CRIMINALITY was not equal.”

— Nikolai Gogol

160. “His whole face tended towards the nose – it was what, in common parlance, is known as a “pitcher-mug.”

— Nikolai Gogol

161. “Everything is deception, everything is a dream, everything is not what it seems to be!”

— Nikolai Gogol

162. “Through the gates of the inn in the provincial town of N drove a rather handsome, smallish spring britzka, of the sort driven around in by bachelors: retired lieutenant colonels, staff captains, landowners possessed of some hundred peasant souls – in short, all those known as gentlemen of the middling sort.”

— Nikolai Gogol

163. “It does not need much wisdom to utter words of reproof; but much wisdom is needed to find such words as do not embitter a man’s misfortune, but encourage him, restore to him his spirit, put spurs to the horse of his soul, refreshed by water.”

— Nikolai Gogol

164. “For in the book which lies before you, and which, probably, you have read in its first edition, there is portrayed a man who is a type taken from our Russian Empire. This man travels about the Russian land and meets with folk of every condition – from the nobly-born to the humble toiler.”

— Nikolai Gogol

165. “Because I cannot sleep. A pain has taken me in my middle, and my legs, from the ankles upwards, are aching as though they were broken.” “That will pass, that will pass, good mother. You must pay no attention to it.” “God grant that it MAY pass. However, I have been rubbing myself with lard and turpentine. What sort of tea will you take? In this jar I have some of the scented kind.”

— Nikolai Gogol

166. “The long-forgotten, living eyes of the portrait began to torment him, and then his madness became dreadful. All the people who surrounded his bed seemed to him horrible portraits. The portrait doubled and quadrupled itself; all the walls seemed hung with portraits, which fastened their living eyes upon him; portraits glared at him from the ceiling, from the floor; the room widened and lengthened endlessly, in order to make room for more of the motionless eyes.”

— Nikolai Gogol

167. “The gentleman also made searching inquiries concerning the hygienic condition of the countryside. Was there, he asked, much sickness about – whether sporadic fever, fatal forms of ague, smallpox, or what not? Yet, though his solicitude concerning these matters showed more than ordinary curiosity, his bearing retained its gravity unimpaired, and from time to time he blew his nose with portentous fervour.”

— Nikolai Gogol

168. “Yet the important person, perfectly satisfied, incidentally, with domestic family tendernesses, found it suitable to have a lady for friendly relations in another part of the city. This lady friend was no whit better or younger than his wife; but there exist such riddles in the world, and it is not our business to judge of them.”

— Nikolai Gogol

169. “What do you want?” in a curt hard voice, which he had practised in his room in private, and before the looking-glass, for a whole week before being raised to his present rank.”

— Nikolai Gogol

170. “You have no love for the good, then force yourself to do good, without any love for it. That will be counted an even greater merit for you than for one who does good for the love of it. Simply force yourself a few times then the love will come to you as well. Believe me, everything can be done.”

— Nikolai Gogol

171. “Pulcheria Ivanovna reached out her hand to stroke her; but the ungrateful animal had evidently become too well used to robber cats, or adopted some romantic notion about love and poverty being better than a palace, for the cats were as poor as church-mice.”

— Nikolai Gogol

172. “Also, the reader will be pleased to know that our hero changed his linen every other day, and in summer, when the weather was very hot, EVERY day, seeing that the very faintest suspicion of an unpleasant odour offended his fastidiousness.”

— Nikolai Gogol

173. “But human nature is inscrutable: he was depressed at the thought of the disapproval of the very people he despised, at whose vanity and general behavior he had laughed.”

— Nikolai Gogol

174. “And at such moments his eyes would grow winning, and his features assume an expression of intense satisfaction. Yet never did these projects pass beyond the stage of debate. Likewise there lay in his study a book with the fourteenth page permanently turned down. It was a book which he had been reading for the past two years!”

— Nikolai Gogol

175. “Thereafter the host took his guests to look at a young wolf which he had got tied to a chain. “He is fed on nothing but raw meat,” he explained, “for I want him to grow up as fierce as possible.” Then the party inspected a pond in which there were “fish of such a size that it would take two men all their time to lift one of them out.” This piece of information was received with renewed incredulity on the part of the brother-in-law.”

— Nikolai Gogol

176. “Nevertheless, the brother-in-law appeared to bode little danger, seeing that he had taken on board a full cargo, and was now engaged in doing nothing of a more menacing nature than picking his nose.”

— Nikolai Gogol

177. “I confess I don’t understand why it’s so arranged that women grab us by the nose as deftly as if it were a teapot handle. Either their hands are made for it, or our noses are no longer good for anything.”

— Nikolai Gogol

178. “I’m only forty-two – the age at which service just seriously begins.”

— Nikolai Gogol

179. “You see, wisdom does not come with grey hairs.”

— Nikolai Gogol

180. “Yes, it isn’t long since I purchased it,” said Nozdrev. “How long?” “How long? Why, I purchased it three days ago, and gave a pretty sum for it, as the devil knows!” “Indeed? Why, three days ago you were at the fair?” “Wiseacre! Cannot one be at a fair and buy land at the same time? Yes, I WAS at the fair, and my steward bought the land in my absence.”

— Nikolai Gogol

181. “I would portray how, in one of these low clay cottages, a dark-browed town girl with quivering young breasts tosses on her solitary bed dreaming of a hussar’s mustache and spurs while moonlight laughs on her cheeks.”

— Nikolai Gogol

182. “Many of the ladies were dressed well and fashionably, others were dressed in whatever God sends to a provincial town.”

— Nikolai Gogol

183. “In a certain Russian ministerial department – – But it is perhaps better that I do not mention which department it was. There are in the whole of Russia no persons more sensitive than Government officials. Each of them believes if he is annoyed in any way, that the whole official class is insulted in his person.”

— Nikolai Gogol

184. “We all know that there are a great many faces in the world, over the carving of which nature has spent no great pains, has used no delicate tools such as files or gimlets, but has simply rough-hewn them with a swing of the arm: one stroke of the axe and there’s a nose, another and there are the lips, the eyes are bored with a great drill, and without polishing it off, nature thrusts it into the world, saying, “This will do.”

— Nikolai Gogol

185. “Yes, and that is what can be done by SIMPLE methods. But nowadays every one is a mechanic, and wants to open that money chest with an instrument instead of simply. For that purpose he hies him to England. Yes, THAT is the thing to do. What folly!” Kostanzhoglo spat and added: “Yet when he returns from abroad he is a hundred times more ignorant than when he went.”

— Nikolai Gogol

186. “Solokha nodded to everyone, and everyone thought she was nodding to him alone.”

— Nikolai Gogol

187. “And now, at length, in my declining years, I am seeking a corner in which to eke out the remainder of my miserable existence, while at the present moment I am enjoying the hospitality of a neighbour of your acquaintance.”

— Nikolai Gogol

188. “Like Ivan Ivanovich, Ivan Nikiforovich has a great dislike of fleas; and therefore neither Ivan Ivanovich nor Ivan Nikiforovich ever passes a Jewish peddler without buying various jars of elixirs against these insects from him, having first given him a good scolding for confessing the Jewish faith.”

— Nikolai Gogol

189. “For the rest, he was large and good-natured, and had a habit of amusing himself with occasional spells of knitting.”

— Nikolai Gogol

190. “No; far from it,” rejoined Sobakevitch, shaking his head. “Judge for yourself, Ivan Grigorievitch. I am fifty years old, yet never in my life had been ill, except for an occasional carbuncle or boil. That is not a good sign. Sooner or later I shall have to pay for it.” And he relapsed into melancholy.”

— Nikolai Gogol

191. “And so let us trot out the rascal!”

— Nikolai Gogol

192. “Be quiet, Afanasii Ivanovich,” said Pulcheria Ivanovna: “you just like to talk, and that’s all. A dog is not clean; a dog soils things, and breaks everything: but the cat is a peaceable beast; she does no harm to any one.”

— Nikolai Gogol

193. “And Petersburg was left without Akakii Akakievich, as though he had never lived there.”

— Nikolai Gogol

194. “In the department of... but it would be better not to say in which department.”

— Nikolai Gogol

195. “Our ranks and estates are so irritated these days that they take personally whatever appears in printed books: such, evidently, is the mood in the air. It is enough simply to say that there is a stupid man in a certain town, and it already becomes personal; suddenly a gentleman of respectable appearance pops up and shouts: “But I, too, am a man, which means that I, too, am stupid” – in short, he instantly grasps the situation.”

— Nikolai Gogol

196. “If what you want,... is to get rich quickly, then you’ll never get rich; but if you want to get rich without asking about time, you’ll get rich quickly.”

— Nikolai Gogol

197. “God, how beautiful some posts and jobs are! how they elevate and delight the soul! but, alas! I am not in the civil service and am denied the pleasure of beholding my superiors’ refined treatment of me.”

— Nikolai Gogol

198. “Look what shoes I brought you – the empress herself wore them.” “No, no, I don’t need any shoes... ” and she blushed deeply.”

— Nikolai Gogol

199. “Therefore, if it really be that you have no genuine love for doing good, do good by forcing yourself to do so.”

— Nikolai Gogol

200. “God, what is our life! An eternal discord between dream and reality!”

— Nikolai Gogol