Anton Chekhov (1860 – 1904)
(Old Style: 17 January 1860 – 2 July 1904) was a major Russian short story writer and playwright.
If there's any illness for which people offer many remedies, you may be sure that particular illness is incurable, I think.
People love talking of their diseases, although they are the most uninteresting things in their lives.
I was so drunk the whole time that I took bottles for girls and girls for bottles.
The more elevated a culture, the richer its language. The number of words and their combinations depends directly on a sum of conceptions and ideas; without the latter there can be no understandings, no definitions, and, as a result, no reason to enrich a language.
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.
Everyone has the same God; only people differ.
Despicable means used to achieve laudable goals render the goals themselves despicable.
The cherry orchard is now mine!... I bought the estate on which my grandfather and father were slaves, where they were not even permitted in the kitchen.
There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined.
In my opinion it is harmful to place important things in the hands of philanthropy, which in Russia is marked by a chance character. Nor should important matters depend on leftovers, which are never there. I would prefer that the government treasury take care of it.
There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.
The more simply we look at ticklish questions, the more placid will be our lives and relationships.
It’s not a matter of old or new forms; a person writes without thinking about any forms, he writes because it flows freely from his soul.
In order to cultivate yourself and to drop no lower than the level of the milieu in which you have landed, it is not enough to read Pickwick and memorize a monologue from Faust.... You need to work continually day and night, to read ceaselessly, to study, to exercise your will.... Each hour is precious.
The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others.
Thought and beauty, like a hurricane or waves, should not know conventional, delimited forms.
When in a serious mood, it seems to me that those people are illogical who feel an aversion toward death. As far as I can see, life consists exclusively of horrors, unpleasantnesses and banalities, now merging, now alternating.
Eyes—the head’s chief of police. They watch and make mental notes. A blind person is like a city abandoned by the authorities. On sad days they cry. In these carefree times they weep only from tender emotions.
You are right to demand that an artist engage his work consciously, but you confuse two different things: solving the problem and correctly posing the question.
Happiness does not await us all. One needn’t be a prophet to say that there will be more grief and pain than serenity and money. That is why we must hang on to one another.