Anton Chekhov quotes - page 6

People understand God as the expression of the most lofty morality. Maybe He needs only perfect people. (Anton Chekhov)
Can words such as Orthodox, Jew, or Catholic really express some sort of exclusive personal virtues or merits? View quote
Anton Chekhov
When a person hasn't in him that which is higher and stronger than all external influences, it is enough for him to catch a good cold in order to lose his equilibrium and begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a dog's bark in every sound. View quote
Anton Chekhov
[Ognev] recalled endless, heated, purely Russian arguments, when the wranglers, spraying spittle and banging their fists on the table, fail to understand yet interrupt one another, themselves not even noticing it, contradict themselves with every phrase, change the subject, then, having argued for two or three hours, begin to laugh. View quote
Anton Chekhov
When one longs for a drink, it seems as though one could drink a whole ocean-that is faith; but when one begins to drink, one can only drink altogether two glasses-that is science. View quote
Anton Chekhov
I'm in mourning for my life. View quote
Anton Chekhov
The more elevated a culture, the richer its language. The number of words and their combinations depends directly on a sum of conceptions and ideas; without the latter there can be no understandings, no definitions, and, as a result, no reason to enrich a language. View quote
Anton Chekhov
I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one. View quote
Anton Chekhov
Who keeps the tavern and serves up the drinks? The peasant. Who squanders and drinks up money belonging to the peasant commune, the school, the church? The peasant. Who would steal from his neighbor, commit arson, and falsely denounce another for a bottle of vodka? The peasant. View quote
Anton Chekhov
Writers are as jealous as pigeons. View quote
Anton Chekhov
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. (Anton Chekhov)
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. View quote
Anton Chekhov
Everything is good in due measure and strong sensations know not measure. View quote
Anton Chekhov
Isolation in creative work is an onerous thing. Better to have negative criticism than nothing at all. View quote
Anton Chekhov
Dear, sweet, unforgettable childhood! Why does this irrevocable time, forever departed, seem brighter, more festive and richer than it actually was? View quote
Anton Chekhov
The more simply we look at ticklish questions, the more placid will be our lives and relationships. View quote
Anton Chekhov
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. View quote
Anton Chekhov
To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards. View quote
Anton Chekhov
If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there. View quote
Anton Chekhov
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? View quote
Anton Chekhov
All the great sages are as despotic as generals, and as ignorant and as indelicate as generals, because they feel secure of impunity. (Anton Chekhov)
We live not in order to eat, but in order not to know what we feel like eating. View quote
Anton Chekhov
Moscow is a city that has much suffering ahead of it. View quote
Anton Chekhov
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. View quote
Anton Chekhov
Happiness does not await us all. One needn't be a prophet to say that there will be more grief and pain than serenity and money. That is why we must hang on to one another. View quote
Anton Chekhov