Anton Chekhov Quotes

279 Sourced Quotes

A fiancé is neither this nor that: he's left one shore, but not yet reached the other.

Anton Chekhov
Pharisaism, obtuseness and tyranny reign not only in the homes of merchants and in jails; I see it in science, in literature, and among youth. I consider any emblem or label a prejudice.... My holy of holies is the human body, health, intellect, talent, inspiration, love and the most absolute of freedoms, the freedom from force and falsity in whatever forms they might appear.

Anton Chekhov
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.

Anton Chekhov
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.

Anton Chekhov
The more simply we look at ticklish questions, the more placid will be our lives and relationships.

Anton Chekhov
Neither I nor anyone else knows what a standard is. We all recognize a dishonorable act, but have no idea what honor is.

Anton Chekhov
They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.

Anton Chekhov
There is nothing more vapid than a philistine petty bourgeois existence with its farthings, victuals, vacuous conversations, and useless conventional virtue.

Anton Chekhov
There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.

Anton Chekhov
You look at any poetic creature: muslin, ether, demigoddess, millions of delights; then you look into the soul and find the most ordinary crocodile!

Anton Chekhov
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
There is no Monday which will not give its place to Tuesday.

Anton Chekhov
An artist must pass judgment only on what he understands; his range is limited as that of any other specialist—that's what I keep repeating and insisting upon. Anyone who says that the artist's field is all answers and no questions has never done any writing or had any dealings with imagery. An artist observes, selects, guesses and synthesizes.

Anton Chekhov
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.

Anton Chekhov
By nature servile, people attempt at first glance to find signs of good breeding in the appearance of those who occupy more exalted stations.

Anton Chekhov
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.

Anton Chekhov
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.

Anton Chekhov
A man who doesn't drink is not, in my opinion, fully a man.

Anton Chekhov
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.

Anton Chekhov
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.

Anton Chekhov
After us they'll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they'll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the same, a hard life full of secrets, but happy. And a thousand years from now man will still be sighing, Oh! Life is so hard! and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.

Anton Chekhov
Is it our job to judge? The gendarme, policemen and bureaucrats have been especially prepared by fate for that job. Our job is to write, and only to write.

Anton Chekhov
Medvedenko: Why do you wear black all the time?
Masha: I'm in mourning for my life, I'm unhappy.

Anton Chekhov
Your talent sets you apart: if you were a toad or a tarantula, even then, people would respect you, for to talent all things are forgiven.

Anton Chekhov
Despite your best efforts, you could not invent a better police force for literature than criticism and the author's own conscience.

Anton Chekhov
Nature's law says that the strong must prevent the weak from living, but only in a newspaper article or textbook can this be packaged into a comprehensible thought. In the soup of everyday life, in the mixture of minutia from which human relations are woven, it is not a law. It is a logical incongruity when both strong and weak fall victim to their mutual relations, unconsciously subservient to some unknown guiding power that stands outside of life, irrelevant to man.

Anton Chekhov
I can't accept our nervous age, since mankind has been nervous during every age. Whoever fears nervousness should turn into a sturgeon or smelt; if a sturgeon makes a stupid mistake, it can only be one: to end up on a hook, and then in a pan in a pastry shell.

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

Anton Chekhov
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
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