Anton Chekhov - Time Quotes

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Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.

Anton Chekhov
I let myself go at the beginning and write with an easy mind, but by the time I get to the middle I begin to grow timid and to fear my story will be too long...That is why the beginning of my stories is always very promising and looks as though I were starting on a novel, and the middle is huddled and timid, and the end is...like fireworks.

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
In Moscow you sit in a huge room at a restaurant; you know no one and no one knows you, and at the same time you don't feel a stranger. But here you know everyone and everyone knows you, and yet you are a stranger — a stranger... A stranger, and lonely...

Anton Chekhov
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
Do you remember you shot a seagull? A man came by chance, saw it and destroyed it, just to pass the time.

Anton Chekhov
The time has come for writers, especially those who are artists, to admit that in this world one cannot make anything out, just as Socrates once admitted it, just as Voltaire admitted it.

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

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
It's worth living abroad to study up on genteel and delicate manners. The maid smiles continuously; she smiles like a duchess on a stage, while at the same time it is clear from her face that she is exhausted from overwork.

Anton Chekhov
There will come a time when everybody will know why, for what purpose, there is all this suffering, and there will be no more mysteries. But now we must live... we must work, just work!

Anton Chekhov
I don't know why one can't chase two rabbits at the same time, even in the literal sense of those words. If you have the hounds, go ahead and pursue.

Anton Chekhov
What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won't seem important at all.

Anton Chekhov
I'm a seagull. No, that's wrong. Remember you shot a seagull? A man happened to come along, saw it and killed it, just to pass the time. A plot for a short story.

Anton Chekhov
I was so drunk the whole time that I took bottles for girls and girls for bottles.

Anton Chekhov
There are no lower or higher or median moralities. There is only one morality, and it is precisely the one that was given to us during the time of Jesus Christ and that stops me, you and Barantsevich from stealing, offending others, lying etc.

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
Dear, sweet, unforgettable childhood! Why does this irrevocable time, forever departed, seem brighter, more festive and richer than it actually was?

Anton Chekhov
Life is difficult for those who have the daring to first set out on an unknown road. The avant-garde always has a bad time of it.

Anton Chekhov