Dead Souls

by Nikolai Gogol

Every man who has lived in the world and mixed

with his fellow men will have remarked something which has remained hidden from the eyes of others;

the value of a book lies in its truth and its actuality rather than in its wording.

that it is the custom of the average Russian to yearn exclusively for information

concerning persons on the higher rungs of the social ladder.

Persons of superficial observation are apt to consider that a man clad in a different coat is quite a different person from what he used to be.

Certain persons in the world exist, not as personalities in themselves, but as spots or specks on the personalities of others.

Oh long-drawn highway, how excellent you are! How often have I in weariness and despondency set forth upon your length, and found in you salvation and rest! How often, as I followed your leading, have I been visited with wonderful thoughts and poetic dreams and curious, wild impressions!

For these reasons do I reaffirm that it is high time to yoke a rascal to the shafts. Let us yoke that rascal.

For human passions are as numberless as is the sand of the seashore, and go on to become his most insistent of masters. Happy, therefore, the man who may choose from among the gamut of human passions one which is noble!

Yes, readers of this book, none of you really care to see humanity revealed in its nakedness. “Why should we do so?” you say. “What would be the use of it? Do we not know for ourselves that human life contains much that is gross and contemptible? Do we not with our own eyes have to look upon much that is anything but comforting? Far better would it be if you would put before us what is comely and attractive, so that we might forget ourselves a little.”