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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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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Mankind has conceived history as a series of battles; hitherto it has considered fighting as the main thing in life.
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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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It is a poor thing for the writer to take on that which he doesn’t understand.
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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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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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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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Is it our job to judge? The gendarme, policemen and bureaucrats have been especially prepared by fate for that job. Our job is to write, and only to write.
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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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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.
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One must speak about serious things seriously.
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Despicable means used to achieve laudable goals render the goals themselves despicable.
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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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Good breeding doesn't mean that you won't spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won't notice when someone else does.
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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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There are in life such confluences of circumstances that render the reproach that we are not Voltaires most inopportune.
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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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He who constantly swims in the ocean loves dry land.
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The person who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, and fears nothing can never be an artist.
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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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We learn about life not from pluses alone, but from minuses as well.
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The wealthy man is not he who has money, but he who has the means to live in the luxurious state of early spring.
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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.