Anton Chekhov Quotes
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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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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.
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People should be beautiful in every way—in their faces, in the way they dress, in their thoughts and in their innermost selves.
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It is depressing to hear the unfortunate or dying man jest.
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Ah, but ignorance is better. At least then there's hope.
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When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters but telegrams.
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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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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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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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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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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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When a person is born, he can embark on only one of three roads of life: if you go right, the wolves will eat you; if you go left, you’ll eat the wolves; if you go straight, you’ll eat yourself.
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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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Dear, sweet, unforgettable childhood! Why does this irrevocable time, forever departed, seem brighter, more festive and richer than it actually was?
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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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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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That can not possibly be, because it could never possibly be.
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It’s even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday.
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It’s not a matter of old or new forms; a person writes without thinking about any forms, he writes because it flows freely from his soul.
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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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A nice man would feel ashamed even before a dog.
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I don’t know why one can’t chase two rabbits at the same time, even in the literal sense of those words. If you have the hounds, go ahead and pursue.
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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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I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one.