Anton Chekhov (1860 – 1904)
(Old Style: 17 January 1860 – 2 July 1904) was a major Russian short story writer and playwright.
It is a poor thing for the writer to take on that which he doesn’t understand.
Despite your best efforts, you could not invent a better police force for literature than criticism and the author’s own conscience.
As I shall lie in the grave alone, so in fact I live alone.
Death is terrible, but still more terrible is the feeling that you might live for ever and never die.
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.
Women writers should write a lot if they want to write. Take the English women, for example. What amazing workers.
When a person hasn’t in him that which is higher and stronger than all external influences, it is enough for him to catch a good cold in order to lose his equilibrium and begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a dog’s bark in every sound.
One had better not rush, otherwise dung comes out rather than creative work.
A fiancé is neither this nor that: he’s left one shore, but not yet reached the other.
Man will only become better when you make him see what he is like.
Each of us is full of too many wheels, screws and valves to permit us to judge one another on a first impression or by two or three external signs.
I don’t care for success. The ideas sitting in my head are annoyed by, and envious of, that which I’ve already written.
I divide all literary works into two categories: Those I like and those I don’t like. No other criterion exists for me.
People who live alone always have something on their minds that they would willingly share.
Who but a stupid barbarian could burn so much beauty in his stove and destroy that which he cannot make?
It’s even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday.
The person who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, and fears nothing can never be an artist.
How intolerable people are sometimes who are happy and successful in everything.
No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith.
The world is a fine place. The only thing wrong with it is us. How little justice and humility there is in us, how poorly we understand patriotism!