Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
—Anton Chekhov
Man is what he believes.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Optimism, Thoughts, Belief, Thought, Thinking, Positive Attitudes, Believe
Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Apathy
People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Happiness, Summer
Men are made for happiness, and anyone who is completely happy has a right to say to himself: “I am doing God’s will on earth”.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Happiness
My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and absolute freedom.
—Anton Chekhov
Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Lawyers, Doctors
Silence accompanies the most significant expressions of happiness and unhappiness: those in love understand one another best when silent, while the most heated and impassioned speech at a graveside touches only outsiders, but seems cold and inconsequential to the widow and children of the deceased.
—Anton Chekhov
Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Values, Knowledge, Action
The leaves did not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow sound of the sea rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have sounded when there was no Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and it will sound as indifferently and monotonously when we are all no more. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Perfection
If you are afraid of loneliness, don’t marry.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Solitude
Lying is the same as alcoholism. Liars prevaricate even on their deathbeds.
—Anton Chekhov
There is no national science just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Science
Don’t you see, if only I could live the rest of my life in some new way! If I could only wake some still, bright morning and feel that life had begun again; that the past was forgotten and had vanished like smoke. Oh, to begin life anew! Tell me, tell me how to begin.
—Anton Chekhov
One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making a mistake.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Mistakes, Success & Failure, Failure, Success
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.
—Anton Chekhov
Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Writing
Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Medicine
The university brings out all abilities including incapability.
—Anton Chekhov
Reason and justice tell me there’s more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism.
—Anton Chekhov
Posterity will say as usual: “In the past things were better, the present is worse than the past”.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: The Past
The more refined one is, the more unhappy.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Unhappiness, One liners
Michael Astroff says that forests are the ornaments of the earth, that they teach mankind to understand beauty and attune his mind to lofty sentiments. Forests temper a stern climate, and in countries where the climate is milder, less strength is wasted in the battle with nature, and the people are kind and gentle.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Wilderness
Only entropy comes easy.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Adversity
A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer. He is a man who has signed a contract with his conscious and his sense of duty.
—Anton Chekhov
To advise is not to compel.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Advice
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?
—Anton Chekhov
We shall find peace. We shall hear angels. We shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.
—Anton Chekhov
When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can’t be cured.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Medicine
If you cry “Forward” you must be sure to make clear the direction in which to go. Don’t you see that if you fail to do that and simply call out the word to a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions?
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Perspective, Communication, Goals, Aspirations
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- V. S. Pritchett British Short Story Writer
- Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) British Short Story Writer
- William H. Gass American Novelist
- Eudora Welty American Short Story Writer
- Damon Runyon American Writer, Journalist
- Andre Dubus American Short Story Writer
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky Russian Novelist
- Katherine Mansfield British Author
- Leo Tolstoy Russian Novelist
- Catherine II of Russia Russian Empress
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