Nikolai Gogol Quotes

The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes. Countless as the sands of the sea are human passions. What is stronger in us passion or habit? Or are all the violent impulses, all the whirl of our desires and turbulent passions, only the consequence of our ardent age, and is it only through youth that they seem deep and shattering? Everywhere across whatever sorrows of which our life is woven, some radiant joy will gaily flash past. How much savage coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manner. 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. Let me warn you, if you start chasing after views, you'll be left without bread and without views. We have the marvelous gift of making everything insignificant. 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. Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord. Here you come across moustaches so wonderful that neither pen nor brush can do justice to them, moustaches to which the best years of a lifetime have been devoted-the object of long hours of vigil by day and by night; moustaches upon which all the perfumes of Arabia have been lavished, the most exquisite scents and essences, and which have been anointed with the rarest and most precious pomades; moustaches which are wrapped up for the night in the most delicate vellum; moustaches for which their possessors show a most touching affection and which are the envy of all those who behold them.

Nikolai Gogol

1809 - 1852