Anton Chekhov Quotes
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Ah, but ignorance is better. At least then there's hope.
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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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The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.
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A nice man would feel ashamed even before a dog.
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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.
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Как легко, доктор, быть философом на бумаге и как это трудно на деле!
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Nothing lulls and inebriates like money; when you have a lot, the world seems a better place than it actually is.
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Everyone judges plays as if they were very easy to write. They don’t know that it is hard to write a good play, and twice as hard and tortuous to write a bad one.
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Each of us is full of too many wheels, screws and valves to permit us to judge one another on a first impression or by two or three external signs.
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Children are holy and pure. Even those of bandits and crocodiles belong among the angels.... They must not be turned into a plaything of one’s mood, first to be tenderly kissed, then rabidly stomped at.
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There is not a single criterion which can serve as the measure of the non-existent, of the non-human.
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The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on; science and art are as well.
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When in a serious mood, it seems to me that those people are illogical who feel an aversion toward death. As far as I can see, life consists exclusively of horrors, unpleasantnesses and banalities, now merging, now alternating.
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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.
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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.
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There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.
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He is no longer a city dweller who has even once in his life caught a ruff or seen how, on clear and cool autumn days, flocks of migrating thrushes drift over a village. Until his death he will be drawn to freedom.
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Life is a vexatious trap; when a thinking man reaches maturity and attains to full consciousness he cannot help feeling that he is in a trap from which there is no escape.
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Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.
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I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one.
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An expansive life, one not constrained by four walls, requires as well an expansive pocket.
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How pleasant it is to respect people! When I see books, I am not concerned with how the authors loved or played cards; I see only their marvelous works.
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If you wish women to love you, be original; I know a man who used to wear felt boots summer and winter, and women fell in love with him.
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Life is difficult for those who have the daring to first set out on an unknown road. The avant-garde always has a bad time of it.