Anton Chekhov Quotes

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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—

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

A tree is beautiful, but what's more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples' character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe. ... What a terrible future!

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.

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

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 University brings out all abilities, including incapability.

Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf.

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

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.

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.

Moscow is a city that has much suffering ahead of it.

To Moscow, to Moscow, to Moscow!

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

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

Everyone has the same God; only people differ.

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

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.

Everything should be first-rate in a person, his face, clothes, soul and thoughts.

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

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

After us they'll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they'll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the same, a hard life full of secrets, but happy. And a thousand years from now man will still be sighing, "Oh! Life is so hard!" and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.

When a person expends the least amount of motion on one action, that is grace.

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

In Western Europe people perish from the congestion and stifling closeness, but with us it is from the spaciousness.... The expanses are so great that the little man hasn't the resources to orient himself.... This is what I think about Russian suicides.

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.

While you're playing cards with a regular guy or having a bite to eat with him, he seems a peaceable, good-humoured and not entirely dense person. But just begin a conversation with him about something inedible, politics or science, for instance, and he ends up in a deadend or starts in on such an obtuse and base philosophy that you can only wave your hand and leave.

Hypocrisy is a revolting, psychopathic state.

Satiation, like any state of vitality, always contains a degree of impudence, and that impudence emerges first and foremost when the sated man instructs the hungry one.

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!'

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.