Anton Chekhov Quotes
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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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In one-act pieces there should be only rubbish-that is their strength.
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Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress.
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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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People love talking of their diseases, although they are the most uninteresting things in their lives.
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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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A grimy fly can soil the entire wall and a small, dirty little act can ruin the entire proceedings.
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A man who doesn’t drink is not, in my opinion, fully a man.
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There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined.
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They say: 'In the long run truth will triumph;' but it is untrue.
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There is no Monday which will not give its place to Tuesday.
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Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric.
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Between 'there is a God' and 'there is no God' lies a whole vast tract, which the really wise man crosses with great effort. A Russian knows one or other of these two extremes, and the middle tract between them does not interest him; and therefore he usually knows nothing, or very little. (Diary, 1897)
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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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It’s easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.
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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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There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and simplicity in our interactions. Be rude when you’re angry, laugh when something is funny, and answer when you’re asked.
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If you can’t distinguish people from lap-dogs, you shouldn’t undertake philanthropic work.
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Hypocrisy is a revolting, psychopathic state.
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I was so drunk the whole time that I took bottles for girls and girls for bottles.
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Better to perish from fools than to accept praises from them.
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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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Dear and most respected bookcase! I welcome your existence, which has for over one hundred years been devoted to the radiant ideals of goodness and justice.
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I try to catch every sentence, every word you and I say, and quickly lock all these sentences and words away in my literary storehouse because they might come in handy.