Anton Chekhov Quotes
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It is depressing to hear the unfortunate or dying man jest.
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If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.'
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We shall find peace. We shall hear the angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.
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A man who doesn’t drink is not, in my opinion, fully a man.
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You are right to demand that an artist engage his work consciously, but you confuse two different things: solving the problem and correctly posing the question.
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A grimy fly can soil the entire wall and a small, dirty little act can ruin the entire proceedings.
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People love talking of their diseases, although they are the most uninteresting things in their lives.
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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.
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Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf.
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Death is terrible, but still more terrible is the feeling that you might live for ever and never die.
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I abide by a rule concerning reviews: I will never ask, neither in writing nor in person, that a word be put in about my book.... One feels cleaner this way. When someone asks that his book be reviewed he risks running up against a vulgarity offensive to authorial sensibilities.
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Ah, but ignorance is better. At least then there's hope.
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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.
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I have in my head a whole army of people pleading to be let out and awaiting my commands.
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'Why do I love him so much, mamma? Why do I feel so sorry for him?' she went on in a quivering voice, and her eyes glistened with tears. 'Who is he? What is he like? As light as a little feather, as a little crumb, but I love him; I love him like a real person. Here he can do nothing, he can't talk, and yet I know what he wants with his little eyes.'
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In one-act pieces there should be only rubbish-that is their strength.
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I have no faith in our hypocritical, false, hysterical, uneducated and lazy intelligentsia when they suffer and complain: their oppression comes from within. I believe in individual people. I see salvation in discrete individuals, intellectuals and peasants, strewn hither and yon throughout Russia. They have the strength, although there are few of them.
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The bourgeoisie loves so-called 'positive' types and novels with happy endings since they lull one into thinking that it is fine to simultaneously acquire capital and maintain one’s innocence, to be a beast and still be happy.
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No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith.
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Although you may tell lies, people will believe you, if only you speak with authority.
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Hypocrisy is a revolting, psychopathic state.
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It is not only the prisoners who grow coarse and hardened from corporeal punishment, but those as well who perpetrate the act or are present to witness it.
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There is no Monday which will not give its place to Tuesday.
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Better to perish from fools than to accept praises from them.