Anton Chekhov Quotes
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Hypocrisy is a revolting, psychopathic state.
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I divide all literary works into two categories: Those I like and those I don’t like. No other criterion exists for me.
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Better to perish from fools than to accept praises from them.
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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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I don’t care for success. The ideas sitting in my head are annoyed by, and envious of, that which I’ve already written.
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Women writers should write a lot if they want to write. Take the English women, for example. What amazing workers.
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They say: 'In the long run truth will triumph;' but it is untrue.
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Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.
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Ah, but ignorance is better. At least then there's hope.
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If you can’t distinguish people from lap-dogs, you shouldn’t undertake philanthropic work.
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A nice man would feel ashamed even before a dog.
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Everyone has the same God; only people differ.
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To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards.
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An artist must pass judgment only on what he understands; his range is limited as that of any other specialist—that's what I keep repeating and insisting upon. Anyone who says that the artist's field is all answers and no questions has never done any writing or had any dealings with imagery. An artist observes, selects, guesses and synthesizes.
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When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters but telegrams.
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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.
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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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It’s easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.
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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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Who but a stupid barbarian could burn so much beauty in his stove and destroy that which he cannot make?
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The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can’t return even if it wants to.
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Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one who kills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years?
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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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'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.'