Life & Wisdom Quote by Nikolai Gogol

Gogol slips a knife into the soft underbelly of moral self-congratulation: the “most righteous” is not merely different from “the most profitable,” it’s structurally at odds with it. The sly parenthetical “of course” does the real work. It assumes the reader already knows this sad arithmetic, as if the corruption is so routine it barely merits explanation. That offhand certainty is classic Gogol: comedy delivered with a straight face, cruelty softened by timing.

The line also hints at a society where virtue has been demoted to a boutique preference, while profit is treated as the serious adult in the room. “Righteous” here isn’t just personal goodness; it’s a claim to legitimacy, a moral story people tell about their choices. “Profitable” is the counter-story, the one that actually governs institutions, careers, and reputations. Gogol’s subtext is that modern life trains us to confuse these narratives until a crisis forces the distinction.

Context matters: Gogol wrote inside the bureaucratic labyrinth of imperial Russia, where status, bribery, and petty self-interest weren’t aberrations but a functioning economic system. His fiction repeatedly stages the spectacle of people who mistake paper for reality - titles, receipts, ranks - and then act surprised when the soul doesn’t cash out. This line captures that worldview in miniature: righteousness is expensive, often lonely, and rarely rewarded on the market’s terms. The joke lands because it’s true, and because Gogol knows we’re all complicit enough to nod at “of course.”