Anton Chekhov Quotes
-
To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards.
-
In my opinion it is harmful to place important things in the hands of philanthropy, which in Russia is marked by a chance character. Nor should important matters depend on leftovers, which are never there. I would prefer that the government treasury take care of it.
-
Silence accompanies the most significant expressions of happiness and unhappiness: those in love understand one another best when silent, while the most heated and impassioned speech at a graveside touches only outsiders, but seems cold and inconsequential to the widow and children of the deceased.
-
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.
-
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.
-
A woman can only become a man’s friend in three stages: first, she’s an agreeable acquaintance, then a mistress, and only after that a friend.
-
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.
-
Nothing lulls and inebriates like money; when you have a lot, the world seems a better place than it actually is.
-
If you really think about it, everything is wonderful in this world, everything except for our thoughts and deeds when we forget about the loftier goals of existence, about our human dignity.
-
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.
-
The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others.
-
All great sages are as despotic as generals, and as ungracious and indelicate as generals, because they are confident of their impunity.
-
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.
-
It’s easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.
-
Как легко, доктор, быть философом на бумаге и как это трудно на деле!
-
I was so drunk the whole time that I took bottles for girls and girls for bottles.
-
By nature servile, people attempt at first glance to find signs of good breeding in the appearance of those who occupy more exalted stations.
-
Death can only be profitable: there’s no need to eat, drink, pay taxes, offend people, and since a person lies in a grave for hundreds or thousands of years, if you count it up the profit turns out to be enormous.
-
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.
-
I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one.
-
There is not a single criterion which can serve as the measure of the non-existent, of the non-human.
-
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?
-
When a person doesn’t understand something, he feels internal discord: however he doesn’t search for that discord in himself, as he should, but searches outside of himself. Thence a war develops with that which he doesn’t understand.
-
The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.