Anton Chekhov Quotes

Critics are like horse-flies which hinder the horses in their plowing of the soil. The horse works, all its muscles drawn tight like the strings on a double-bass, and a fly settles on his flanks and tickles and buzzes. And what does the fly buzz about? It scarcely knows itself; simply because it is restless and wants to proclaim: 'Look, I too am living on the earth. See, I can buzz, too, buzz about anything.'

If our life has a meaning, an aim, it has nothing to do with our personal happiness, but something wiser and greater.

Man will become better when you show him what he is like.

The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.

Here I am with you & yet not for a single moment do I forget that there's an unfinished novel waiting for me.

The wealthy man is not he who has money, but he who has the means to live in the luxurious state of early spring.

I was oppressed with a sense of vague discontent and dissatisfaction with my own life, which was passing so quickly and uninterestingly, and I kept thinking it would be a good thing if I could tear my heart out of my breast, that heart which had grown so weary of life.

Everything should be first-rate in a person, his face, clothes, soul and thoughts.

Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric.

The unhappy are egotistical, base, unjust, cruel, and even less capable of understanding one another than are idiots. Unhappinessdoes not unite people, but separates them.

You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.

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

To dine, drink champagne, raise a racket and make speeches about the people's consciousness, the people's conscience, freedom andso forth while servants in tails are scurrying around your table, just like serfs, and out in the severe cold on the street await coachmen--this is the same as lying to the holy spirit.

You've only got to begin to do anything to find out how few honest, honourable people there are. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think: "Oh Lord, you've given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants.

Oh, I have now a mania for shortness. Whatever I read - my own or other people's works - it all seems to me not short enough.

A good person will feel guilty even before a dog.

Oh, I don't object, of course, to cutting wood from necessity, but why destroy the forests? The woods of Russia are trembling under the blows of the axe. Millions of trees have perished. The homes of the wild animals and birds have been desolated; the rivers are shrinking, and many beautiful landscapes are gone forever. And why? Because men are too lazy and stupid to stoop down and pick up their fuel from the ground.

The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on; science and art are as well.

And what does it mean -- dying? Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and only the five we know are lost at death, while the other ninety-five remain alive.

If you cry ''Forward'' you must be sure to make clear the direction in which to go. Don't you see that if you fail to do that and simply call out the word to a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions?

I agree that one can't dispense with the reins and the whip altogether, for knaves find their way even into literature, but no thinking will discover a better police for literature than the critics and the author's own conscience.

It's easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.

In all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.

Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions.

When performing an autopsy, even the most inveterate spiritualist would have to question where the soul is.

A sweet lie is more gracious for us than a virulent but real truth.

All I wanted was to say honestly to people: 'Have a look at yourselves and see how bad and dreary your lives are!' The important thing is that people should realize that, for when they do, they will most certainly create another and better life for themselves. I will not live to see it, but I know that it will be quite different, quite unlike our present life. And so long as this different life does not exist, I shall go on saying to people again and again: 'Please, understand that your life is bad and dreary!'

It is always "Youth, youth," when there is nothing else to be said.

If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.

I've never been in love. I've dreamt of it day and night, but my heart is like a fine piano no one can play because the key is lost.

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

Try to be original in your play and as clever as possible; but don't be afraid to show yourself foolish; we must have freedom of thinking, and only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.

If you ever have need of my life, come and take it.

Write about this man who, drop by drop, squeezes the slave's blood out of himself until he wakes one day to find the blood of a real human being--not a slave's--coursing through his veins.

I let myself go at the beginning and write with an easy mind, but by the time I get to the middle I begin to grow timid and to fear my story will be too long. . .That is why the beginning of my stories is always very promising and looks as though I were starting on a novel, and the middle is huddled and timid, and the end is...like fireworks.

I observed that after marriage people cease to be curious.

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.

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.

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

Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.

We old bachelors smell like dogs, do we? So be it. But I must take issue with your claim that doctors who treat female illnesses are womanizers and cynics at heart. Gynecologists deal with savage prose the likes of which you have never dreamed of.

[Six principles that make for a good story:] 1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality: flee the stereotype; 6. compassion.

Every person lives his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

You look boldly ahead; isn't it only that you don't see or divine anything terrible in the future; because life is still hidden from your young eyes.

You are right in demanding that an artist approach his work consciously, but you are confusing two concepts: the solution of a problem and the correct formulation of a problem. Only the second is required of the artist.

The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can't return even if it wants to.

The sea has neither meaning nor pity.