'nature makes a finishing pass with her chisel'

In short, it was all just right, as neither nature nor art can contrive, but as only occurs when they join together, when, after the heaped-up, often senseless, labors of men, nature makes a finishing pass with her chisel, lightening the heavy masses, removing the crude-feeling regularity and indigent gaps through which the bare, undisguised plan peeps out, and imparts a wondrous warmth to all that was created in coldly measured cleanness and neatness.

—Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls (1842, trans. 1996 Pevear and Volokhonsky)

'an aptly spoken Russian word'

Aptly uttered is as good as written, an axe cannot destroy it. And oh, how apt is everything that comes from deep Russia, where there are no German, or Finnish, or any other tribes, but all is native natural-born, lively and pert Russian wit, which does not fish for a word in its pockets, does not brood on it like a hen on her chicks, but pastes it on at once, like a passport, for eternal wear . . . 

As a numberless multitude of churches and monasteries with their cupolas, domes, and crosses is scattered over holy, pious Russia, so a numberless multitude of tribes, generations, peoples also throngs, ripples, and rushes over the face of the earth. And each of these peoples, bearing within itself the pledge of its strength, filled with the creative capacity of the soul, with its own marked peculiarity and other gifts of God, is in an original fashion distinguished by its own word, which, whatever subject it may express, reflects in that expression a portion of its character. A knowledge of hearts and a wise comprehension of life resound in the word of the Briton; like a nimble fop the short-lived word of the Frenchman flashes and scatters; whimsically does the German contrive his lean, intelligent word, not accessible to all; but there is no word so sweeping, so pert, so bursting from beneath the very heart, so ebullient and vibrant with life, as an aptly spoken Russian word.

—Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls (1842, trans. 1996 Pevear and Volokhonsky)