Anton Chekhov Quotes

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Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress.

Anton Chekhov
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.

Anton Chekhov
One can only call that youth healthful which refuses to be reconciled to old ways and which, foolishly or shrewdly, combats the old. This is nature's charge and all progress hinges upon it.

Anton Chekhov
When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters but telegrams.

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

Anton Chekhov
Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.

Anton Chekhov
Life isn't finished for us yet! We're going to live!…Maybe, if we wait a little longer, we shall find out why we live, why we suffer.

Anton Chekhov
I couldn't stand a happiness that went on morning noon and night…I promise to be a splendid husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, does not rise every night in my sky.
On being urged to marry

Anton Chekhov
They say: "In the long run truth will triumph;" but it is untrue.

Anton Chekhov
That can not possibly be, because it could never possibly be.

Anton Chekhov
When one longs for a drink, it seems as though one could drink a whole ocean—that is faith; but when one begins to drink, one can only drink altogether two glasses—that is science.

Anton Chekhov
The personal life of every individual is based on secrecy, and perhaps it is partly for that reason that civilized man is so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.

Anton Chekhov
My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence and lies, no matter what form the latter two take. Such is the program I would adhere to if I were a major artist.

Anton Chekhov
But if you had asked him what his work was, he would look candidly and openly at you with his large bright eyes through his gold pincenez, and would answer in a soft, velvety, lisping baritone: "My work is literature."

Anton Chekhov
If doctors prescribe too many remedies for an illness it probably means that the illness can't be cured at all.

Anton Chekhov
VERSHININ: Take Copernicus or Columbus, for instance — didn't their discoveries seem useless or ridiculous at first, and some fool's empty nonsense seem the truth?

Anton Chekhov
Everything is quiet, peaceful and against it all is only the silent protest of statistics...

Anton Chekhov
In a century or two, or in a millennium, people will live in a new way, a happier way. We won"t be there to see it - but it"s why we live, why we work. It"s why we suffer. We"re creating it. That"s the purpose of our existence. The only happiness we can know is to work toward that goal.

Anton Chekhov
It is the writer's business not to accuse and not to prosecute, but to champion the guilty, once they are condemned and suffer punishment.

Anton Chekhov
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.

Anton Chekhov
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.

Anton Chekhov
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.

Anton Chekhov
Faith is a capacity of the spirit. It is like talent: you have to be born with it

Anton Chekhov
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.

Anton Chekhov
You only have to start a job of work to realize how few decent, honest folk there are about.

Anton Chekhov
In short stories it is better to say not enough than to say too much, because, because--I don't know why.

Anton Chekhov
And it is the way with us that you may express disapproval of the sun or the moon, or anything you like, but God preserve you from touching the Liberals! Heaven forbid!

Anton Chekhov
When one sees one of the romantic creatures before him he imagines he is looking at some holy being, so wonderful that its one breath could dissolve him in a sea of a thousand charms and delights; but if one looks into the soul -- it's nothing but a common crocodile.

Anton Chekhov
A doctor is called in, but a nurse sent for.

Anton Chekhov
I can only regard with bewilderment an educated man who is also religious

Anton Chekhov