Persons [ ] I am who I am and that’s who I am | Nikolai Gogol, 1809-1852
Portrait of Nikolai Gogol by Otto Friedrich Theodor von Möller (early 1840s)
“The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.”
“We have the marvelous gift of making everything insignificant.”
“However stupid a fool’s words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man.”
“Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord.”
“You can’t imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays.”
“Let me warn you, if you start chasing after views, you’ll be left without bread and without views.”
“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.”
“Countless as the sands of the sea are human passions.”
” 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.”
“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.”
“It’s the most righteous, which of course is not the same thing as the most profitable.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I am who I am and that’s who I am”
Nikolai Gogol, 1809-1852
