Top 100 Anton Chekhov Quotes
#1. If there's any illness for which people offer many remedies, you may be sure that particular illness is incurable, I think.
Anton Chekhov
#3. Having sex is easy," he ocntinued. "All you need to do is undress the woman. But it's what comes afterwards that's such a drag; such a load of nonsense!
Anton Chekhov
#4. The chance you give the wrong guy who is run across with you at the right time, unless you don't give a chance the right guy who is run across with you at the wrong time, only you will always be upset
Anton Chekhov
#5. The problem is that we attempt to solve the simplest questions cleverly, thereby rendering them unusually complex. One should seekthe simple solution.
Anton Chekhov
#6. Nobody asks her not to understand! It's a lesson for these foreigners!
Anton Chekhov
#7. And you know once a man has fished, or watched the thrushes hovering in flocks over the village in the bright, cool, autumn days, he can never really be a townsman, and to the day of his death he will be drawn to the country.
Anton Chekhov
#8. In spite of his clumsiness and rough manner, he was a peaceable man, of infinite kindliness and goodness of heart, always ready to be of use.
Anton Chekhov
#9. If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there
Anton Chekhov
#10. It is as acceptable now to love the wives of others as it is to smoke their cigars and read their books.
Anton Chekhov
#11. And it is the way with us that you may express disapproval of the sun or the moon, or anything you like, but God preserve you from touching the Liberals! Heaven forbid!
Anton Chekhov
#12. Watching a woman make Russian pancakes, you might think that she was calling on the spirits or extracting from the batter the philosopher's stone.
Anton Chekhov
#13. However you feed a wolf she will always look toward the forest
Anton Chekhov
#14. That can not possibly be, because it could never possibly be.
Anton Chekhov
#15. Because only savage women and animals are sincere. Once civilization has introduced a demand for such comforts as, for instance, feminine virtue, sincerity is out of place ...
Anton Chekhov
#16. We all have too many wheels, screws and valves to judge each other on first impressions or one or two pointers. I don't understand you, you don't understand me and we don't understand ourselves.
Anton Chekhov
#17. His cheeks, his eyes, his chest, his body, all of him was so well fed, so loathsome and repellent!
Anton Chekhov
#18. All my friends and relatives have always taken a condescending tone to my writing, and never ceased urging me in a friendly way not to give up real work for the sake of scribbling.
Anton Chekhov
#19. I am not a liberal, not a conservative, not a believer in gradual progress, not a monk. I should like to be a free artist and nothing more.
Anton Chekhov
#20. His reading suggested a man swimming in the sea among the wreckage of his ship, and trying to save his life by greedily clutching first at one spar and then at another.
Anton Chekhov
#21. Once you've married, be strict but just with your wife, don't allow her to forget herself, and when a misunderstanding arises, say: Don't forget that I made you happy.
Anton Chekhov
#22. Andrei Yefimych is extremely fond of intelligence and honesty, but he lacks character and faith in his right to organize an intelligent and honest life around him.
Anton Chekhov
#23. Probably nature itself gave man the ability to lie so that in difficult and tense moments he could protect his nest, just as do the vixen and wild duck.
Anton Chekhov
#24. And the wind, the wind! The bare birches and cherry-trees, unable to endure its rude caresses, bowed low down to the ground and wailed: God, for what sin hast Thou bound us to the earth and will not let us go free?
Anton Chekhov
#25. Where is the law that says people should do as they please?
Anton Chekhov
#26. In Western Europe people perish from the congestion and stifling closeness, but with us it is from the spaciousness ... The expanses are so great that the little man hasn't the resources to orient himself ... This is what I think about Russian suicides.
Anton Chekhov
#27. Who loved without any genuine feeling, with superfluous phrases, affectedly, hysterically, with an expression that suggested that it was not love nor passion, but something more significant; ...
Anton Chekhov
#29. The brother and sister talked till midnight without understanding each other.
Anton Chekhov
#30. Instructing in cures, therapists always recommend that "each case be individualized." If this advice is followed, one becomes persuaded that those means recommended in textbooks as the best, means perfectly appropriate for the template case, turn out to be completely unsuitable in individual cases.
Anton Chekhov
#31. My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.
Anton Chekhov
#33. I look upon you as so many pawns, as inanimate pawns.
Anton Chekhov
#34. therefore the idea of the service of humanity, of brotherly love and the solidarity of mankind, is more and more dying out in the world, and indeed this idea is sometimes treated with derision.
Anton Chekhov
#35. I think human beings must have faith or must look for faith, otherwise our life is empty, empty. To live and not to know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why there are stars in the sky. You must know why you are alive, or else everything is nonsense, just blowing in the wind.
Anton Chekhov
#36. They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.
Anton Chekhov
#37. Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and when he dies only the five senses that we know perish with him, and the other ninety-five remain alive.
Anton Chekhov
#38. Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.
Anton Chekhov
#39. We learn about life not from plusses alone, but from minuses as well.
Anton Chekhov
#40. Loud voices were heard from upstairs. Madame Kushkin is in a fit, most likely, or else she has
Anton Chekhov
#41. When you're thirsty and it seems that you could drink the entire ocean that's faith; when you start to drink and finish only a glass or two that's science.
Anton Chekhov
#42. Shabelsky: I'd go into the flames of hell, into the jaws of the crocodile, just so as not to stay here. I am bored.
I've become dulled from boredom. I've got on everyone's nerves. You leave me at home so she isn't bored alone, but I've made her life hell, I've eaten her up!
Anton Chekhov
#43. If I were to be asked: What now constitutes the main and fundamental feature of your existence? I would answer: Insomnia.
Anton Chekhov
#45. It's been a long time since I've had champagne.
Anton Chekhov
#46. We have been sincere from beginning to end," said I, "and if anyone is sincere he is right.
Anton Chekhov
#47. If in the first act you introduce a gun, by the third act you have to use it.
Anton Chekhov
#48. It is always "Youth, youth," when there is nothing else to be said.
Anton Chekhov
#49. Purity and virtue scarcely differ from vice, if they're not free of malice
Anton Chekhov
#50. It was hard and sour, but, as Poushkin said, the illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths. I saw a happy man, one whose dearest dream had come true, who had attained his goal in life, who had got what he wanted, and was pleased with his destiny and with himself.
Anton Chekhov
#51. In your books I have flung myself into the bottomless pit, performed miracles, slain, burned towns, preached new religions, conquered whole kingdoms
Anton Chekhov
#52. there--hang analysis! Why, is a man likely to interpret his sensations when he is flying head foremost from
Anton Chekhov
#53. Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
Anton Chekhov
#54. Country life has its advantages,' he used to say. 'You sit on the veranda drinking tea and your ducklings swim on the pond, and everything smells good ... and there are gooseberries.
Anton Chekhov
#55. Wisdom ... comes not from age, but from education and learning.
Anton Chekhov
#56. An agonising, strange, soul-revolting silence lasted for three minutes. Oh, those three minutes!
Anton Chekhov
#57. In all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.
Anton Chekhov
#58. You are right to demand that an author be conscious of what he is doing, but you are confusing two concepts: solving the problem and correctly formulating the problem. Only the latter is required of the artist.
Anton Chekhov
#59. When we retreat to the country, we are hiding not from people, but from our pride, which, in the city and among people, operates unfairly and immoderately.
Anton Chekhov
#61. The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to.
Anton Chekhov
#62. All great sages are as despotic as generals, and as ungracious and indelicate as generals, because they are confident of their impunity.
Anton Chekhov
#63. When all is said and done, no literature can outdo the cynicism of real life; you won't intoxicate with one glass someone who has already drunk up a whole barrel.
Anton Chekhov
#64. Everyone judges plays as if they were very easy to write. They don't know that it is hard to write a good play, and twice as hardand tortuous to write a bad one.
Anton Chekhov
#65. A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.
Anton Chekhov
#66. I promise to be an excellent husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, will not appear every day in my sky.
Anton Chekhov
#67. There will come a time when everybody will know why, for what purpose, there is all this suffering, and there will be no more mysteries. But now we must live ... we must work, just work!
Anton Chekhov
#68. Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.
Anton Chekhov
#69. One must speak about serious things seriously.
Anton Chekhov
#70. Neither I nor anyone else knows what a standard is. We all recognize a dishonorable act, but have no idea what honor is.
Anton Chekhov
#72. He had a shaggy black dog whom he called Syntax.
Anton Chekhov
#73. I was so drunk the whole time that I took bottles for girls and girls for bottles.
Anton Chekhov
#74. To torment and tantalize oneself with hopes of possible fortune is so sweet, so thrilling!
Anton Chekhov
#75. For God's sake, have some self-respect and do not run off at the mouth if your brain is out to lunch.
Anton Chekhov
#76. The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.
Anton Chekhov
#77. And is it not ridiculous to think of justice when society greets all violence as a reasonable and expedient necessity, and any act of mercy - an acquittal, for instance - provokes a great outburst of dissatisfied, vengeful feeling?
Anton Chekhov
#78. A person loves to talk about his illnesses although that is the least interesting part of his life.
Anton Chekhov
#79. There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.
Anton Chekhov
#80. There are a great many wicked people in the world," said Emelyan.
Anton Chekhov
#81. Within a year Ivan Dmitritch was completely forgotten in the town, and his books, heaped up by his landlady in a sledge in the shed, were pulled to pieces by boys.
Anton Chekhov
#82. I must run away, I must escape this very day or I shall go out of my mind.
Anton Chekhov
#83. His soul is still hovering here, near his body," says the young man. "It does not depart from the body for three days.
Anton Chekhov
#84. If I had listened to the critics I'd have died drunk in the gutter
Anton Chekhov
#85. Calculating selfishness is the annihilation of self.
Anton Chekhov
#86. There it is - happiness. Here it comes, closer and closer. I can hear its footsteps. And if we never see it or know it, well, that's all right too. Others will.
Anton Chekhov
#87. In Russia there is no philosophy, but philosophize everything, even the small fry.
Anton Chekhov
#88. I feel as cross as a dog," he muttered, clenching his fists. "I hate and despise myself! My God! like some depraved schoolboy, I am making love to another man's wife, writing idiotic letters,
Anton Chekhov
#89. A man who doesn't drink is not, in my opinion, fully a man.
Anton Chekhov
#90. To harbor spiteful feelings against ordinary people for not being heroes is possible only for narrow-minded or embittered man.
Anton Chekhov
#91. In countries where there is a mild climate, less effort is expended on the struggle with nature and man is kinder and more gentle.
Anton Chekhov
#92. If you fear loneliness, then don't get married.
Anton Chekhov
#95. The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.
Anton Chekhov
#96. My holy of holies are the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom - freedom from force and falsity, in whatever form these last may be expressed. This is the program I would maintain, were I a great artist.
Anton Chekhov
#97. I believe that nothing passes without a trace and that each of our smallest steps has significance for the present and the future.
Anton Chekhov
#98. Not. Lermontov's Tamara was lonely and she saw the devil.
Anton Chekhov
#99. The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak different languages but the same flame burns in them all. Oh, if you only knew what unearthly happiness my soul feels now from being able to understand them.
Anton Chekhov
#100. People are far more sincere and good-humored at speeding their parting guests than on meeting them.
Anton Chekhov
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