Anton Chekhov
Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Mother
You confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for an artist.Collection: Artist
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—Collection: Destiny
If I wanted to order a ring for myself, the inscription I should choose would be: "Nothing passes away." I believe that nothing passes away without leaving a trace, and that every step we take, however small, has significance for our present and our future existence.Collection: Believe
A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages - first an acquantaince, next a mistress, and only then a friend.Collection: Friendship
It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense. Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything. The stupider they are, the wider they conceive their horizons to be. And if an artist decides to declare that he understands nothing of what he sees - this in itself constitutes a considerable clarity in the realm of thought, and a great step forward.Collection: Time
It's easier to ask for money from the poor than from the wealthy.Collection: Money
The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.Collection: Art
The problem is that we attempt to solve the simplest questions cleverly, thereby rendering them unusually complex. One should seekthe simple solution.Collection: Simple
Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions.Collection: Hero
Nothing can be accomplished by logic and ethics.Collection: Logic
The more cultured a man, the less fortunate he is.Collection: Education
Brevity - the sister of talent.Collection: Talent
There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined.Collection: Discipline
A good person will feel guilty even before a dog.Collection: Dog
In all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.Collection: Spirit
In short stories it is better to say not enough than to say too much, because, because--I don't know why.Collection: Stories
I've never been in love. I've dreamt of it day and night, but my heart is like a fine piano no one can play because the key is lost.Collection: Heart
Isolation in creative work is an onerous thing. Better to have negative criticism than nothing at all.Collection: Creative
The critics suppose that it is easy to write a play. They aren't aware that writing a good play is difficult and writing a bad one is twice as hard.Collection: Writing
To make a face from marble means to remove from the slab everything that is not the faceCollection: Mean
And it is the way with us that you may express disapproval of the sun or the moon, or anything you like, but God preserve you from touching the Liberals! Heaven forbid!Collection: Moon
A grimy fly can soil the entire wall and a small, dirty little act can ruin the entire proceedings.Collection: Wall
Is it our job to judge? The gendarme, policemen and bureaucrats have been especially prepared by fate for that job. Our job is towrite, and only to write.Collection: Jobs
Instructing in cures, therapists always recommend that "each case be individualized." If this advice is followed, one becomes persuaded that those means recommended in textbooks as the best, means perfectly appropriate for the template case, turn out to be completely unsuitable in individual cases.Collection: Mean
You've only got to begin to do anything to find out how few honest, honourable people there are. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think: "Oh Lord, you've given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants.Collection: Sleep
Lermontov died at age twenty-eight and wrote more than have you and I put together. Talent is recognizable not only by quality, but also by the quantity it yields.Collection: Yield
In all my life I never met anyone so frivolous as you two, so crazy and unbusinesslike. I tell you in plain Russian your property is going to be sold and you don't seem to understand what I say.Collection: Crazy
There will come a time when everybody will know why, for what purpose, there is all this suffering, and there will be no more mysteries. But now we must live ... we must work, just work!Collection: Suffering
The more simply we look at ticklish questions, the more placid will be our lives and relationships.Collection: Looks
Here I am with you & yet not for a single moment do I forget that there's an unfinished novel waiting for me.Collection: Here I Am
Ivanov: Once I worked hard and thought a lot but I never got tired; now I do nothing and think of nothing, but I'm tired in body and spirit. My conscience aches day and night, I feel deeply guilty but I don't understand where I am actually at fault. And add to that my wife's illness, my lack of money, the constant bickering, gossip, unnecessary conversations, that stupid Borkin... My home has become loathsome to me and I find living there worse than torture.Collection: Stupid
To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards.Collection: Drinking
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.Collection: Ocean
You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly.Collection: Artist
One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep.Collection: Mean
Oh, I don't object, of course, to cutting wood from necessity, but why destroy the forests? The woods of Russia are trembling under the blows of the axe. Millions of trees have perished. The homes of the wild animals and birds have been desolated; the rivers are shrinking, and many beautiful landscapes are gone forever. And why? Because men are too lazy and stupid to stoop down and pick up their fuel from the ground.Collection: Beautiful
All the great sages are as despotic as generals, and as ignorant and as indelicate as generals, because they feel secure of impunity.Collection: Sage
Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one who kills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years?Collection: Years
If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It's better to live somehow than not at all.Collection: Execution
The people I am afraid of are the ones who look for tendentiousness between the lines and are determined to see me as either liberal or conservative. I am neither liberal, nor conservative, nor gradualist, nor monk, nor indifferentist. I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one.Collection: Regret
Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far asblather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material.Collection: Law
To Moscow, to Moscow, to Moscow!Collection: Moscow
One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.Collection: Thinking
People understand God as the expression of the most lofty morality. Maybe He needs only perfect people.Collection: Expression
There are people whom even children's literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon.Collection: Children
Those who come a hundred or two hundred years after us will despise us for having lived our lives so stupidly and tastelessly. Perhaps they'll find a means to be happy.Collection: Happiness
Can words such as Orthodox, Jew, or Catholic really express some sort of exclusive personal virtues or merits?Collection: Catholic