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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
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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
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When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters but telegrams.
Anton Chekhov
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Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.
Anton Chekhov
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Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.
Anton Chekhov
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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
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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
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They say: "In the long run truth will triumph;" but it is untrue.
Anton Chekhov
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That can not possibly be, because it could never possibly be.
Anton Chekhov
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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
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While you're playing cards with a regular guy or having a bite to eat with him, he seems a peaceable, good-humoured and not entirely dense person. But just begin a conversation with him about something inedible, politics or science, for instance, and he ends up in a deadend or starts in on such an obtuse and base philosophy that you can only wave your hand and leave.
Anton Chekhov
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Do you remember you shot a seagull? A man came by chance, saw it and destroyed it, just to pass the time.
Anton Chekhov
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Love, friendship, and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
Anton Chekhov
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To begin to live in the present, we must first atone for our past and be finished with it, and we can only atone for it by suffering, by extraordinary, unceasing exertion.
Anton Chekhov
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To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards.
Anton Chekhov
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When you live on cash, you understand the limits of the world around which you navigate each day. Credit leads into a desert with invisible boundaries.
Anton Chekhov
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Three o'clock in the morning. The soft April night is looking at my windows and caressingly winking at me with its stars. I can't sleep, I am so happy.
Anton Chekhov
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Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms.
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A tree is beautiful, but what's more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples' character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe.... What a terrible future!
Anton Chekhov
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Mankind has conceived history as a series of battles; hitherto it has considered fighting as the main thing in life.
Anton Chekhov
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When a person expends the least amount of motion on one action, that is grace.
Anton Chekhov
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This life of ours...human life is like a flower gloriously blooming in a meadow: along comes a goat, eats it up—no more flower.
Anton Chekhov
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By all means I will be married if you wish it. But on these conditions: everything must be as it has been hitherto—that is, she must live in Moscow while I live in the country, and I will come and see her.... I promise to be an excellent husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, will not appear every day in my sky.
Anton Chekhov
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A writer must be as objective as a chemist: he must abandon the subjective line; he must know that dung-heaps play a very reasonable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.
Anton Chekhov
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Time will pass, and we shall go away for ever, and we shall be forgotten, our faces will be forgotten, our voices, and how many there were of us; but our sufferings will pass into joy for those who will live after us, happiness and peace will be established upon earth, and they will remember kindly and bless those who have lived before.
Anton Chekhov
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Quote of the day
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Anton Chekhov
Creative Commons
Born:
January 29, 1860
Died:
July 15, 1904
(aged 44)
Bio:
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short story writer who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history.
Known for:
The Seagull (1896)
The Cherry Orchard (1904)
Three Sisters
Uncle Vanya (1897)
Ivanov (1887)
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