Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogolwas a Russian dramatist, novelist and short story writer of Ukrainian ethnicity. Russian and Ukrainian scholars debate whether or not Gogol was of their respective ethnicities...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth31 March 1809
CityVelyki Sorochyntsi, Ukraine
CountryRussian Federation
marvelous insignificant
We have the marvelous gift of making everything insignificant.
savages manners refined
...how much savage coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manners...
righteous courses profitable
It's the most righteous, which of course is not the same thing as the most profitable.
soil may lord
The Lord grant we may all be tillers of the soil.
elderly young gogol
Also, though not over-elderly, he was not over-young.
listen-to-me
They don’t listen to me, they don’t hear me, they don’t see me.
debris shows governors
The more debris there is the more it will show the governor's activity.
barely draws force midst mysterious plains squat towns
Russia! Russia... Everything in you is open, desolate and level; your squat towns barely protrude in the midst of the plains like dots, like counters; there is nothing to tempt or enchant the onlooker's gaze. But what is this inscrutable, mysterious force that draws me to you?
disdain examining man
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.