Anton Chekhov Quotes
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If you can’t distinguish people from lap-dogs, you shouldn’t undertake philanthropic work.
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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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There is no Monday which will not give its place to Tuesday.
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Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.
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Better to perish from fools than to accept praises from them.
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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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To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards.
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It’s easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.
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Hypocrisy is a revolting, psychopathic state.
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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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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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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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They say: 'In the long run truth will triumph;' but it is untrue.
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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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I was so drunk the whole time that I took bottles for girls and girls for bottles.
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When a person hasn’t in him that which is higher and stronger than all external influences, it is enough for him to catch a good cold in order to lose his equilibrium and begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a dog’s bark in every sound.
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Happiness does not await us all. One needn’t be a prophet to say that there will be more grief and pain than serenity and money. That is why we must hang on to one another.
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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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When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters but telegrams.
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The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others.
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When one longs for a drink, it seems as though one could drink a whole ocean-that is faith; but when one begins to drink, one can only drink altogether two glasses-that is science.
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Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far as blather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material.
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Everyone has the same God; only people differ.
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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.