Anton Chekhov Quotes
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You ask 'What is life?' That is the same as asking 'What is a carrot?' A carrot is a carrot and we know nothing more.
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Not everyone knows when to be silent and when to go. It not infrequently happens that even diplomatic persons of good worldly breeding fail to observe that their presence is arousing a feeling akin to hatred in their exhausted or busy host, and that this feeling is being concealed with an effort and disguised with a lie.
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It is unfortunate that we try to solve the simplest questions cleverly, and therefore make them unusually complicated. We should seek a simple solution.
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Sports are positively essential. It is healthy to engage in sports, they are beautiful and liberal, liberal in the sense that nothing serves quite as well to integrate social classes, etc., than street or public games.
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Watching a woman make Russian pancakes, you might think that she was calling on the spirits or extracting from the batter the philosopher’s stone.
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One must speak about serious things seriously.
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It is a poor thing for the writer to take on that which he doesn’t understand.
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When we retreat to the country, we are hiding not from people, but from our pride, which, in the city and among people, operates unfairly and immoderately.
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He who constantly swims in the ocean loves dry land.
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I would love to meet a philosopher like Nietzsche on a train or boat and to talk with him all night. Incidentally, I don’t consider his philosophy long-lived. It is not so much persuasive as full of bravura.
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Moscow is a city that has much suffering ahead of it.
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Isolation in creative work is an onerous thing. Better to have negative criticism than nothing at all.
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Do you know when you may concede your insignificance? Before God or, perhaps, before the intellect, beauty, or nature, but not before people. Among people, one must be conscious of one’s dignity.
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There are in life such confluences of circumstances that render the reproach that we are not Voltaires most inopportune.
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Solomon made a great mistake when he asked for wisdom.
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There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.
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Tsars and slaves, the intelligent and the obtuse, publicans and pharisees all have an identical legal and moral right to honor the memory of the deceased as they see fit, without regard for anyone else’s opinion and without the fear of hindering one another.
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The person who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, and fears nothing can never be an artist.
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The cherry orchard is now mine!... I bought the estate on which my grandfather and father were slaves, where they were not even permitted in the kitchen.
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In order to cultivate yourself and to drop no lower than the level of the milieu in which you have landed, it is not enough to read Pickwick and memorize a monologue from Faust.... You need to work continually day and night, to read ceaselessly, to study, to exercise your will.... Each hour is precious.
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Country acquaintances are charming only in the country and only in the summer. In the city in winter they lose half of their appeal.
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Despicable means used to achieve laudable goals render the goals themselves despicable.
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When performing an autopsy, even the most inveterate spiritualist would have to question where the soul is.
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Everything is good in due measure and strong sensations know not measure.