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.
Nikolai GogolI saw that I'd get nowhere on the straight path, and that to go crookedly was straighter.
Nikolai GogolBut wise is the man who disdains no character, but with searching glance explores him to the root and cause of all.
Nikolai GogolLike all of us sinners, General Betrishchev was endowed with many virtues and many defects. Both the one and the other were scattered through him in a sort of picturesque disorder. Self-sacrifice, magnanimity in decisive moments, courage, intelligence--and with all that, a generous mixture of self-love, ambition, vanity, petty personal ticklishness, and a good many of those things which a man simply cannot do without.
Nikolai Gogol