Anton Chekhov - Life Quotes

39 Sourced Quotes

View all Anton Chekhov Quotes
It seems to me that all of the evil in life comes from idleness, boredom, and psychic emptiness, but all of that is inevitable when you become accustomed to living at others' expense.

Anton Chekhov
We learn about life not from pluses alone, but from minuses as well.

Anton Chekhov
An expansive life, one not constrained by four walls, requires as well an expansive pocket.

Anton Chekhov
You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.

Anton Chekhov
Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.

Anton Chekhov
Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.

Anton Chekhov
Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it—just as though one were in a madhouse or prison.

Anton Chekhov
In two or three hundred years life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful, astounding. Man needs such a life and if it hasn't yet appeared, he should begin to anticipate it, wait for it, dream about it, prepare for it. To achieve this, he has to see and know more than did his grandfather and father.

Anton Chekhov
He who doesn't know how to be a servant should never be allowed to be a master; the interests of public life are alien to anyone who is unable to enjoy others' successes, and such a person should never be entrusted with public affairs.

Anton Chekhov