Anton Chekhov Quotations

People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.

How unbearable at times are people who are happy, people for whom everything works out.

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand... Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing.

When a woman isn't beautiful, people always say, 'You have lovely eyes, you have lovely hair.'

All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart stands still.

I promise to be an excellent husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, will not appear every day in my sky.

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.

There is nothing new in art except talent.

If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.

You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.

A good upbringing means not that you won't spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won't notice it when someone else does.

No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith.

When you're thirsty and it seems that you could drink the entire ocean that's faith; when you start to drink and finish only a glass or two that's science.

The more refined one is, the more unhappy.

To judge between good or bad, between successful and unsuccessful would take the eye of a God.

Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.

We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.

Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.

The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.

Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric.

Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.

If you cry 'forward', you must without fail make plain in what direction to go.

Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.

We learn about life not from plusses alone, but from minuses as well.

People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about.

Reason and justice tell me there's more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism.

The University brings out all abilities, including incapability.

One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making a mistake.

Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.

The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others.

When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can't be cured.

Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.

The only difference between doctors and lawyers is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you, too.

A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.

A fiance is neither this nor that: he's left one shore, but not yet reached the other.

The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on; science and art are as well.

It's easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.

When an actor has money he doesn't send letters, he sends telegrams.

Only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.

Medvienko: Why do you always wear black? Masha: I am in mourning for my life. I am unhappy.

If only we could go back to Moscow! Sell the house, finish with our life here, and go back to Moscow.

He was a rationalist, but he had to confess that he liked the ringing of church bells.

Liubov Andreevna: Are you still a student? Trofimov: I expect I shall be a student to the end of my days.

But if you had asked him what his work was, he would look candidly and openly at you with his large bright eyes through his gold pincenez, and would answer in a soft, velvety, lisping baritone: "My work is literature."

Do silly things. Foolishness is a great deal more vital and healthy than our straining and striving after a meaningful life.

There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.

Art, especially the stage, is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling. There are in store for you many unsuccessful days and whole unsuccessful seasons: there will be great misunderstandings and deep disappointments… you must be prepared for all this, expect it and nevertheless, stubbornly, fanatically follow your own way.

Cross out as many adjectives and adverbs as you can. ... It is comprehensible when I write: "The man sat on the grass," because it is clear and does not detain one's attention. On the other hand, it is difficult to figure out and hard on the brain if I write: "The tall, narrow-chested man of medium height and with a red beard sat down on the green grass that had already been trampled down by the pedestrians, sat down silently, looking around timidly and fearfully." The brain can't grasp all that at once, and art must be grasped at once, instantaneously.

I think human beings must have faith or must look for faith, otherwise our life is empty, empty. To live and not to know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why there are stars in the sky. You must know why you are alive, or else everything is nonsense, just blowing in the wind.

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth of a moonlit night if you'll write that a gleam like starlight shone from the pieces of a broken bottle, and then the dark, plump shadow of a dog or wolf appeared. You will bring life to nature only if you don't shrink from similes that liken its activities to those of humankind.

What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.

Everything on earth is beautiful, everything -- except what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own human dignity.

Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf.

If an intelligent, educated, and healthy man begins to complain of his lot and go down-hill, there is nothing for him to do but to go on down until he reaches the bottom--there is no hope for him. Where could my salvation come from? How can I save myself? I cannot drink, because it makes my head ache. I never could write bad poetry. I cannot pray for strength and see anything lofty in the languor of my soul. Laziness is laziness and weakness weakness. I can find no other names for them. I am lost, I am lost; there is no doubt of that.

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.

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.

Not one of our mortal gauges is suitable for evaluating non-existence, for making judgments about that which is not a person.

The problem is that we attempt to solve the simplest questions cleverly, thereby rendering them unusually complex. One should seekthe simple solution.

Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions.

Life is given only once, and one wants to live it boldly, with full conscious and beauty.

We are accustomed to live in hopes of good weather, a good harvest, a nice love-affair, hopes of becoming rich or getting the office of chief of police, but I've never noticed anyone hoping to get wiser. We say to ourselves: it'll be better under a new tsar, and in two hundred years it'll still be better, and nobody tries to make this good time come tomorrow. On the whole, life gets more and more complex every day and moves on its own sweet will, and people get more and more stupid, and get isolated from life in ever-increasing numbers.

And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.

The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.

Everyone has the same God; only people differ.

Lying is the same as alcoholism. Liars prevaricate even on their deathbeds.

The snow has not yet left the earth but spring is already asking to enter your heart...

I divide all literary works into two categories: Those I like and those I don't like. No other criterion exists for me.

All I wanted was to say honestly to people: 'Have a look at yourselves and see how bad and dreary your lives are!' The important thing is that people should realize that, for when they do, they will most certainly create another and better life for themselves. I will not live to see it, but I know that it will be quite different, quite unlike our present life. And so long as this different life does not exist, I shall go on saying to people again and again: 'Please, understand that your life is bad and dreary!'

The desire to serve the common good must without fail be a requisite of the soul, a necessity for personal happiness; if it issuesnot from there, but from theoretical or other considerations, it is not at all the same thing.

Desription should be very brief and have an incidental nature.

Try to reason about love, and you will lose your reason.

Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.

In a century or two, or in a millennium, people will live in a new way, a happier way. We won"t be there to see it - but it"s why we live, why we work. It"s why we suffer. We"re creating it. That"s the purpose of our existence. The only happiness we can know is to work toward that goal.

Better to perish from fools than to accept praises from them.

People should be beautiful in every way - in their faces, in the way they dress, in their thoughts, and in their innermost selves.

My mother and father are the only people on the whole planet for whom I will never begrudge a thing. Should I achieve great things, it is the work of their hands; they are splendid people and their absolute love of their children places them above the highest praise. It cloaks all of their shortcomings, shortcomings that may have resulted from a difficult life.

There are no small number of people in this world who, solitary by nature, always try to go back into their shell like a hermit crab or a snail.

I long to embrace, to include in my own short life, all that is accessible to man. I long to speak, to read, to wield a hammer in a great factory, to keep watch at sea, to plow. I want to be walking along the Nevsky Prospect, or in the open fields, or on the ocean - wherever my imagination ranges.

Love, respect, and friendship do unite a people as well as a common hatred does.

Common hypocrites pass themselves off as doves; political and literary hypocrites pose as eagles. But don't be fooled by their eagle-like appearance. These are not eagles, but rats or dogs.

A man and a woman marry because both of them do not know what to do with themselves.

People's destinies are so different. Some people drag along, unnoticed and boring—they're all alike, and they're all unhappy. Then there are others, like for instance you—you're one in a million. You're happy—

For God's sake, have some self-respect and do not run off at the mouth if your brain is out to lunch.

Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.

If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.

You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you.

My love is like a stone tied round my neck; it's dragging me down to the bottom; but I love my stone. I can't live without it.

When asked, "Why do you always wear black?", he said, "I am mourning for my life.

[In] death at least there would be one profit; it would no longer be necessary to eat, to drink, to pay taxes, or to [offend] others; and as a man lies in his grave not one year, but hundreds and thousands of years, the profit was enormous. The life of man was, in short, a loss, and only his death a profit.

In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations! Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions. Nor is it necessary to portray many main characters. Let two people be the center of gravity in your story: he and she.

The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.

A woman is fascinated not by art but by the noise made by those in the field.

An actress without talent, forty years old, ate a partridge for dinner, and I felt sorry for the partridge, for it occurred to me that in its life it had been more talented, more sensible, and more honest than the actress.

[Six principles that make for a good story:] 1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality: flee the stereotype; 6. compassion.

A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages - first an acquantaince, next a mistress, and only then a friend.

If you want to work on your art, work on your life.

One had better not rush, otherwise dung comes out rather than creative work.