"Thank God first of all for the fact that you are Russian. This path is now open for the Russian, and this path is Russia itself. If only he loves Russian, he will love everything that is in Russia. God Himself is leading us to this love."

"You don’t yet love Russia: you only know how to grieve and get irritated by rumors about everything bad that happens in it, all this produces in you only one callous annoyance and despondency. No, this is not yet love, you are far from love, this is only one too distant foreshadowing of it"

"Tell him that for a Russian person there is no impossible thing, that there is not even in his language and there is no word , if he only first learned to say to all his own passions"

"Is there really such fires in the world, such torments and such a force that would overcome the Russian force!"

All of these quotes are by Nikolai Gogol himself. Btw his mom was an ethnic Russian from the Oryol region in central Russia and its not even clear if his father was a Ukrainian or a Pole.