Anton Chekhov
An enormously vast field lies between "God exists" and "there is no God." The truly wise man traverses it with great difficulty. A Russian knows one or the other of these two extremes, but is not interested in the middle ground. He usually knows nothing, or very little.Collection: Wise
An artist must only judge of what he understands, his field is just as limited as that of any other specialist... That in his sphere there are no questions, but only answers, can only be maintained by those who have never written and have had no experience of thinking in images.Collection: Artist
There isn't a Monday that would not cede its place to Tuesday.Collection: Monday
When you want to touch the reader's heart, try to be colder. It gives their grief as it were, a background, against which it stands out in greater relief.Collection: Grief
Solomon made a big mistake when he asked for wisdom.Collection: Wisdom
We old bachelors smell like dogs, do we? So be it. But I must take issue with your claim that doctors who treat female illnesses are womanizers and cynics at heart. Gynecologists deal with savage prose the likes of which you have never dreamed of.Collection: Dog
Please, understand that your life is bad and dreary!Collection: Life Is
When you describe the miserable and unfortunate, and want to make the reader feel pity, try to be somewhat colder - that seems to give a kind of background to another's grief, against which it stands out more clearly. Whereas in your story the characters cry and you sigh. Yes, be more cold. ... The more objective you are, the stronger will be the impression you make.Collection: Kindness
To harbor spiteful feelings against ordinary people for not being heroes is possible only for narrow-minded or embittered man.Collection: Hero
Just as I shall lie alone in the grave, so, in essence, do I live alone.Collection: Lying
This life of ours...human life is like a flower gloriously blooming in a meadow: along comes a goat, eats it up---no more flower.Collection: Flower
An artist observes, selects, guesses, and synthesizes.Collection: Art
The teacher must be an actor, an artist,passionately in love with his work.Collection: Teacher
There is nothing more vulgar than a petty bourgeois life with its halfpence, its victuals, its futile talk, and its useless conventional virtue.Collection: Vapid
I promise to be a splendid husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, won't in my sky every day...Collection: Husband
Women can't forgive failure.Collection: Forgiving
Life has gone by as if I never livedCollection: Gone
If you wish women to love you be original; I know a man who used to wear felt boots summer and winter & women fell in love with him.Collection: Summer
When all is said and done, no literature can outdo the cynicism of real life; you won't intoxicate with one glass someone who has already drunk up a whole barrel.Collection: Real
I can only regard with bewilderment an educated man who is also religiousCollection: Religious
When men ask me how I know so much about men, they get a simple answer: everything I know about men, I learned from me.Collection: Writing
The bourgeoisie is very fond of so-called practical types and novels with happy endings, since they soothe it with the idea that one can both accumulate capital and preserve innocence, be a beast and at the same time be happy...Collection: Happiness
Without a knowledge of languages you feel as if you don't have a passport.Collection: Travel
At the door of every happy person there should be a man with a hammer whose knock would serve as a constant reminder of the existence of unfortunate people.Collection: Happiness
You ask me what life is. That's like asking what a carrot is. A carrot is a carrot, and there's nothing more to know.Collection: Life
Anna Petrovna: Never talk to women about your own good qualities. Let them find out for themselves.Collection: Quality
Love, respect, and friendship do unite a people as well as a common hatred does.Collection: People
What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won't seem important at all.Collection: Important
The stupider the peasant, the better the horse understands him.Collection: Funny
It's very hard, feeling that you're no more than a piece of unwanted furniture in this world.Collection: Feelings
Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.Collection: Real
Everything should be first-rate in a person, his face, clothes, soul and thoughts.Collection: Clothes
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.Collection: Government
Time will pass, and we shall go away for ever, and we shall be forgotten, our faces will be forgotten, our voices, and how many there were of us; but our sufferings will pass into joy for those who will live after us, happiness and peace will be established upon earth, and they will remember kindly and bless those who have lived before.Collection: Time
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.Collection: Avant Garde
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.Collection: Writing
What must human beings be, to destroy what they can never create?Collection: Humans
When asked, "Why do you always wear black?", he said, "I am mourning for my life.Collection: Mourning
If ever my life can be of any use to you, come and claim it.Collection: Use
He who doesn't know how to be a servant should never be allowed to be a master; the interests of public life are alien to anyone who is unable to enjoy others' successes, and such a person should never be entrusted with public affairs.Collection: Aliens
Calculating selfishness is the annihilation of self.Collection: Self
Man will become better when you show him what he is like.Collection: Men
I observed that after marriage people cease to be curious.Collection: People
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.Collection: Sorry
The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.Collection: World
If only one tooth aches, rejoice that not all of them ache.... If your wife betrays you, be glad that she betrayed only you and not the nation.Collection: Wife
It is easier to ask of the poor than of the rich.Collection: Rich
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.Collection: Dog
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.Collection: Art