To Anton Chekhov Quotes

#1. I abide by a rule concerning reviews: I will never ask, neither in writing nor in person, that a word be put in about my book ... One feels cleaner this way. When someone asks that his book be reviewed he risks running up against a vulgarity offensive to authorial sensibilities.

Anton Chekhov

#2. Better to perish from fools than to accept praises from them.

Anton Chekhov

#3. Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions.
(Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)

Anton Chekhov

#4. It seems to me that all of the evil in life comes from idleness, boredom, and psychic emptiness, but all of that is inevitable when you become accustomed to living at others' expense.

Anton Chekhov

#5. We live not in order to eat, but in order not to know what we feel like eating.

Anton Chekhov

#6. Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary confinement is a great deal harder to bear than compulsory.

Anton Chekhov

#7. I long to embrace, to include in my own short life, all that is accessible to man. I long to speak, to read, to wield a hammer in a great factory, to keep watch at sea, to plow. I want to be walking along the Nevsky Prospect, or in the open fields, or on the ocean - wherever my imagination ranges.

Anton Chekhov

#8. So it is in life ... In search of the truth, people make two steps forward and one step back. Sufferings, mistakes, and the tedium of life throw them back, but the thirst for truth and a stubborn will drive them on and on. And who knows? Maybe they'll row their way to the real truth ...

Anton Chekhov

#9. Isolation in creative work is an onerous thing. Better to have negative criticism than nothing at all.

Anton Chekhov

#10. 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

#11. If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It's better to live somehow than not at all.

Anton Chekhov

#12. 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

#13. Why, if ever again... you dare to mention a single word... about my mother... I shall send you flying downstairs!" "What's

Anton Chekhov

#14. He always seemed to women different from what he was, and they loved in him not himself, but the man created by their imagination, whom they had been eagerly seeking all their lives; and afterwards, when they noticed their mistake, they loved him all the same.

Anton Chekhov

#15. I have the feeling that I've seen everything, but failed to notice the elephants.

Anton Chekhov

#16. It's better to live down a scandal than to ruin one's life.

Anton Chekhov

#17. Certain formalities. It is a great delight also to seal up a love-letter, and, slowly putting on one's hat and coat, to go softly out of the house and to carry the treasure to the post.

Anton Chekhov

#18. What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won't seem important at all.

Anton Chekhov

#19. 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

#20. Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.

Anton Chekhov

#21. People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about.

Anton Chekhov

#22. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection.

Anton Chekhov

#23. When dawn comes I'm sitting in bed with my arms around my knees and, since I have nothing to do, am trying to know myself. "Know yourself"
what splendid and useful advice; too bad the ancients never thought of showing how to use this advice.

Anton Chekhov

#24. For the salvation of his soul the Muslim digs a well. It would be a fine thing if each of us were to leave behind a school, or a well, or something of the sort, so that life would not pass by and retreat into eternity without a trace.

Anton Chekhov

#25. One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that they'll beproving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven.

Anton Chekhov

#26. 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

#27. And the man who seeks salvation in change of place like a migrating bird would find nothing anywhere, for all the world is alike to him.

Anton Chekhov

#28. To a chemist nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist, he must lay aside his personal subjective standpoint and must understand that muck heaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that the evil passions are as inherent in life as the good ones.

Anton Chekhov

#29. I myself smoke, but my wife asked me to speak today on the harmfulness of tobacco, so what can I do? If it's tobacco, then let it be tobacco.

Anton Chekhov

#30. Do you remember you shot a seagull? A man came by chance, saw it and destroyed it, just to pass the time.

Anton Chekhov

#31. MEDVIEDENKO
Why do you always wear mourning?
MASHA
I dress in black to match my life. I am unhappy.

Anton Chekhov

#32. I have in my head a whole army of people pleading to be let out and awaiting my commands.

Anton Chekhov

#33. But if we reason it out simply and not try to be one bit fancy, then what sort of pride can you possibly take or what's the sense of ever having it, if man is poorly put together as a physiological type and if the enormous majority of the human race is brutal, stupid, and profoundly unhappy?

Anton Chekhov

#34. I still lack a political, religious, and philosophical world view. I change it every month, so I'll have to limit myself to the description of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how they speak.

Anton Chekhov

#35. Wine and tobacco destroy the individuality. After a cigar or a glass of vodka you are no longer Peter Sorin, but Peter Sorin plus somebody else. Your ego breaks in two: you begin to think of yourself in the third person.

Anton Chekhov

#36. In short stories it is better to say not enough than to say too much, because, because
I don't know why.

Anton Chekhov

#37. 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

#38. Despicable means used to achieve laudable goals render the goals themselves despicable.

Anton Chekhov

#39. Kosykh: What the hell ... is there really no one even to talk to? We might as well be living in Australia: no common interests, no solidarity ... Everyone lives separate lives ... But I must go ... it's time. [Takes his cap.] Time is precious. [Gives Lebedev his hand.] I pass!

Anton Chekhov

#40. If you wish women to love you be original; I know a man who used to wear felt boots summer and winter & women fell in love with him.

Anton Chekhov

#41. 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

#42. Women writers should write a lot if they want to write. Take the English women, for example. What amazing workers.

Anton Chekhov

#43. HELENA. What a fine day! Not too hot. [A pause.]

VOITSKI. A fine day to hang oneself.

Anton Chekhov

#44. To be in continual ecstasies over nature shows poverty of imagination. In comparison with what my imagination can give me, all these streams and rocks are trash, and nothing else.

Anton Chekhov

#45. If ever my life can be of any use to you, come and claim it.

Anton Chekhov

#46. Faith is a capacity of the spirit. It is like talent: you have to be born with it.

Anton Chekhov

#47. To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards.

Anton Chekhov

#48. 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

#49. It's worth living abroad to study up on genteel and delicate manners. The maid smiles continuously; she smiles like a duchess on a stage, while at the same time it is clear from her face that she is exhausted from overwork.

Anton Chekhov

#50. I am a man of cultivation; I have studied various remarkable books, but I cannot fathom the direction of my preferences; do I want to live or do I want to shoot myself, so to speak? But in order to be ready for all contingencies, I always carry a revolver in my pocket.

Anton Chekhov

#51. You ask me what life is. That's like asking what a carrot is. A carrot is a carrot, and there's nothing more to know.

Anton Chekhov

#52. One hundred years from now, the people who come after us, for whom our lives are showing the way
will they think of us kindly? Will they remember us with a kind word? I wish to God I could think so.

Anton Chekhov

#53. A certain percentage, they tell us, must every year go... that way... to the devil, I suppose, so that the rest may remain chaste, and not be interfered with.

Anton Chekhov

#54. 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

#55. 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

#56. Nobody asks her not to understand! It's a lesson for these foreigners!

Anton Chekhov

#57. We go to great pains to alter life for the happiness of our descendants and our descendants will say as usual: things used to be so much better, life today is worse than it used to be.

Anton Chekhov

#58. Any idiot can face a crisis, it is day to day living that wears you out. - Anton Chekhov

Anonymous

#59. To live simply to die is by no means amusing, but to live with the knowledge that you will die before your time, that's really is idiotic

Anton Chekhov

#60. The problem is that we attempt to solve the simplest questions cleverly, thereby rendering them unusually complex. One should seekthe simple solution.

Anton Chekhov

#61. Tsars and slaves, the intelligent and the obtuse, publicans and pharisees all have an identical legal and moral right to honor the memory of the deceased as they see fit, without regard for anyone else's opinion and without the fear of hindering one another.

Anton Chekhov

#62. 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

#63. Ivanov: Gentlemen, you've again set up a drinking shop in my study ... I have asked each and every one of you a
thousand times not to do that ...
Look now, you've spilt vodka on a paper ... and there are crumbs ... and gherkins ...
It's disgusting!

Anton Chekhov

#64. One can only call that youth healthful which refuses to be reconciled to old ways and which, foolishly or shrewdly, combats the old. This is nature's charge and all progress hinges upon it.

Anton Chekhov

#65. Death can only be profitable: there's no need to eat, drink, pay taxes, offend people, and since a person lies in a grave for hundreds or thousands of years, if you count it up the profit turns out to be enormous.

Anton Chekhov

#66. It is a poor thing for the writer to take on that which he doesn't understand.

Anton Chekhov

#67. To believe in God is not hard. Inquisitors, Byron and Arakcheev believed in Him. No, believe in man!

Anton Chekhov

#68. Never bring a cannon on stage in Act I unless you intend to fire it by the last act.

Anton Chekhov

#69. The phlegamtic female is a weepy, bug-eyed, fat, lumpy, fleshy German. She looks like a sack of flour. She is born in order to become a mother-in-law. That is her whole ambition.

Anton Chekhov

#70. In the first place, the ideas of people who are not intellectually free are always in a muddle, and it's extremely difficult to talk to them; and, secondly, they usually love no one, and have nothing to do with women, and their mysticism has an unpleasant effect on sensitive people. I

Anton Chekhov

#71. The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.

Anton Chekhov

#72. They say we fear only what we don't understand. And, indeed, it's very hard to understand why doormen and ushers are so important, so arrogant, and so majestically impolite. When I read serious articles I feel exactly the same vague fear.

Anton Chekhov

#73. In all my life I never met anyone so frivolous as you two, so crazy and unbusinesslike. I tell you in plain Russian your property is going to be sold and you don't seem to understand what I say.

Anton Chekhov

#74. It is uncomfortable to ask condemned people about their sentences just as it is awkward to ask wealthy people why they need so much money, why they use their wealth so poorly, and why they don't just get rid of it when they recognize that it is the cause of their unhappiness.

Anton Chekhov

#75. What's the point? To harbor spiteful feelings against ordinary people for not being heroes is possible only for a narrow-minded or embittered man.

Anton Chekhov

#76. The past,' he thought, 'is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of another.' And it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain; that when he touched one end the other quivered.

Anton Chekhov

#77. From mere common humanity he ought to be treated seriously.

Anton Chekhov

#78. Without solitude true happiness was impossible. The fallen angel was faithless to God probably only because he longed for solitude, which angles knew not.

Anton Chekhov

#79. He is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.

Anton Chekhov

#80. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.

Anton Chekhov

#81. If my life can ever be of any use to you, come and take it.

Anton Chekhov

#82. A naive man is nothing better than a fool. But you women contrive to be naive in such a way that in you it seems sweet, and gentle, and proper, and not as silly as it really is.

Anton Chekhov

#83. 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

#84. To advise is not to compel.

Anton Chekhov

#85. What must human beings be, to destroy what they can never create?

Anton Chekhov

#86. THE Superintendent said to me: "I only keep you out of regard for your worthy father; but for that you would have been sent flying long ago." I replied to him: "You flatter me too much, your Excellency, in assuming that I am capable of flying.

Anton Chekhov

#87. If you want women to love you, then don't be cross in front of them and don't go all pompous ... -Anna Petrovna in Ivanov

Anton Chekhov

#88. Try to reason about love, and you will lose your reason.

Anton Chekhov

#89. A man ought to be able to be carried away by his feelings, he ought to be able to be mad, to make mistakes, to suffer! A woman will forgive you audacity and insolence, but she will never forgive your reasonableness!

Anton Chekhov

#90. Once a man gets a fixed idea, there's nothing to be done.

Anton Chekhov

#91. What she can't get into her narrow mind is that we're above such things as love. Our whole aim - the whole sense of our life - is to avoid petty illusions that stop us being free and happy. On, on, on!

Anton Chekhov

#92. I've noticed that people who get married cease to be curious.

Anton Chekhov

#93. These people have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and wild herbs.

Anton Chekhov

#94. Anna Petrovna: I am beginning to think, doctor, that fate has cheated me. The majority of people, who maybe are no better than I am, are happy and pay nothing for that happiness. I have paid for everything, absolutely everything! And how dearly! Why have I paid such terrible interest?

Anton Chekhov

#95. To make a face from marble means to remove from the slab everything that is not the face

Anton Chekhov

#96. It is as acceptable now to love the wives of others as it is to smoke their cigars and read their books.

Anton Chekhov

#97. Being in love shows a person how he ought to be.

Anton Chekhov

#98. You don't believe in your right to it; and here now you can't sleep.

Anton Chekhov

#99. In a century or two, or in a millennium, people will live in a new way, a happier way. We won"t be there to see it - but it"s why we live, why we work. It"s why we suffer. We"re creating it. That"s the purpose of our existence. The only happiness we can know is to work toward that goal.

Anton Chekhov

#100. I think that it would be less difficult to live eternally than to be deprived of sleep throughout life.

Anton Chekhov