Anton Chekhov Quotes

An artist observes, selects, guesses, and synthesizes.

What a delight it is to respect people!

In Russia there is no philosophy, but philosophize everything, even the small fry.

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.

Not everyone knows how to be silent or to leave in good time. It happens that even people of good breeding fail to notice that their presence provokes in the weary or preoccupied host a feeling akin to hatred, and that this feeling is tensely concealed and covered up with lies.

Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.

To a chemist, nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist; he must abandon the subjective line; he must know that dungheaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.

The University brings out all abilities, including incapability.

The time's come: there's a terrific thunder-cloud advancing upon us, a mighty storm is coming to freshen us up....It's going to blow away all this idleness and indifference, and prejudice against work....I'm going to work, and in twenty-five or thirty years' time every man and woman will be working.

In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you'll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball.

He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people.

Who keeps the tavern and serves up the drinks? The peasant. Who squanders and drinks up money belonging to the peasant commune, the school, the church? The peasant. Who would steal from his neighbor, commit arson, and falsely denounce another for a bottle of vodka? The peasant.

Desription should be very brief and have an incidental nature.

I do not know why one should not hunt two hares even in the literal sense....

Reason and justice tell me there's more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism.

We learn about life not from plusses alone, but from minuses as well.

Calculating selfishness is the annihilation of self.

I should think I'm going to be a perpetual student.

Everyone has the same God; only people differ.

Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.

It is not only the prisoners who grow coarse and hardened from corporal punishment, but those as well who perpetrate the act or are present to witness it.

I've been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and can't remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good advice. The only reviewer who ever made an impression on me was Skabichevsky, who prophesied that I would die drunk in the bottom of a ditch.

Even while lying, you'll be believed if you speak with authority.

Without a knowledge of languages you feel as if you don't have a passport.

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.

Idea for a short story. The shore of a lake, a young girl who's spent her whole life beside it, a girl like you She loves the lake the way a seagull does, and she's happy and free as a seagull. Then a man comes along, sees her, and ruins her life because he has nothing better to do. Destroys her like this seagull here.

Anyone who says the artist's field is all answers and no questions has never done any writing or had any dealings with imageryYou are confusing two concepts: answering the questions and formulating them correctly. Only the latter is required of an author.

Oh, dreams! In one night, lying with one's eyes shut, one may sometimes live through more than ten years of happiness.

If I wanted to order a ring for myself, the inscription I should choose would be: "Nothing passes away." I believe that nothing passes away without leaving a trace, and that every step we take, however small, has significance for our present and our future existence.

Dear and most respected bookcase! I welcome your existence, which has for over one hundred years been devoted to the radiant ideals of goodness and justice.

When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can't be cured.

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

A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages - first an acquantaince, next a mistress, and only then a friend.

People are far more sincere and good-humored at speeding their parting guests than on meeting them.

People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.

Art, especially the stage, is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling. There are in store for you many unsuccessful days and whole unsuccessful seasons: there will be great misunderstandings and deep disappointments… you must be prepared for all this, expect it and nevertheless, stubbornly, fanatically follow your own way.

But at the same time, in reality, what a difference there is between the world today, and what it used to be! And with the passage of more time, some two or three hundred years, say, people will look back at our own times with horror, or with sneering laughter, because all of our present day life will appear so clumsy, and burdensome, extraordinarily inept and strange. Yes, certainly, what a life it will be then, what a life!

In my head there is a whole army of people asking to be let out and waiting for the word of command.

Anna Petrovna (to Shabelsky): You can't make a simple joke without an injection of venom. You are a poisonous man. Joking apart, Count, you're very poisonous. It's hideously boring to live with you. You're always grumpy, complaining, you find everyone bad, good for nothing. Tell me frankly, Count, did you ever speak well of anyone?

Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.

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

If one wants to lead a good life, A HUMAN LIFE, one must work.

I have no faith in our hypocritical, false, hysterical, uneducated and lazy intelligentsia when they suffer and complain: their oppression comes from within. I believe in individual people. I see salvation in discrete individuals, intellectuals and peasants, strewn hither and yon throughout Russia. They have the strength, although there are few of them.

Love, respect, and friendship do unite a people as well as a common hatred does.

This life of ours...human life is like a flower gloriously blooming in a meadow: along comes a goat, eats it up---no more flower.

One usually dislikes a play while writing it, but afterward it grows on one. Let others judge and make decisions.

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.

All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart stands still.