The Mantle, and Other Stories

“Around the windows and above the doors were a multitude of small pictures, which you grow accustomed to regard as spots on the wall, and which you never look at.””

— Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

“- How dare you, I repeat, In disregard of all decency, call me a goose?- I spit on your head, Ivan Ivanovich! What are you screaming so for?””

— Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

“At the end of the table, the secretary was reading the decision in some case, but in such a mournful and monotonous voice, that the condemned man himself would have fallen asleep while listening to it. The judge, no doubt, would have been the first of all to do so, had he not entered into an engrossing conversation while it was going on.””

— Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

“And Petersburg was left without Akakii Akakievich, as though he had never lived there. A being disappeared, and was hidden, who was protected by none, dear to none, interesting to none, who never even attracted to himself the attention of an observer of nature, who omits no opportunity of thrusting a pin through a common fly, and examining it under the microscope...””

— Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

“All this has for me an indescribable charm, perhaps because I no longer see it, and because anything from which we are separated is pleasing to us.””

— Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

“in accordance with the primitive arrangement of things, the most trifling causes produce the greatest events, and the grandest undertakings end in the most insignificant results.””

— Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

“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 Vasilevich Gogol

“UTTERLY NONSENSICAL things happen in this world. Sometimes there is absolutely no rhyme or reason in them: suddenly the very nose which had been going around with the rank of a state councillor and created such a stir in the city, found itself again, as though nothing were the matter, in its proper place, that is to say, between the two cheeks of Major Kovalyov.””

— Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol

“But, in accordance with the primitive arrangement of things, the most trifling causes produce the greatest events, and the grandest undertakings end in the most insignificant results.””

— Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol