Nikolai Gogol said this quote

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 Gogol

The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.

~ Nikolai Gogol

Like 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

You see, wisdom does not come with grey hairs.

~ Nikolai Gogol