Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Anton Chekhov (Russian Short Story Writer)

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904) was Russia’s greatest playwright and one of the inventors of the modern short story. He is celebrate for his synthesis of naturalism and symbolism in his portrayals of upper-class life in pre-revolutionary Russia.

Born in Taganrog, Russia, into a family of farmers, Chekhov studied medicine and became a doctor. At the same time, he supported his family as a freelance journalist and a writer of comic sketches. He considered himself a doctor above all and a writer in pastime; he declared, “Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress. When I get fed up with one, I spend the night with the other. Though it is irregular, it is less boring this way, and besides, neither of them loses anything through my infidelity.”

Chekhov had a considerable influence on 20th-century drama. His first play, The Seagull, opened unsuccessfully in 1885. It got awful reviews, and he walked out on it at intermission and was determined never to compose another play. However, two years later, when it was produced a second time by the Moscow Art Theater and directed by Constantin Stanislavsky, it received rave reviews. This triumph inspired Chekhov to write the plays The Three Sisters (1901,) The Cherry Orchard (1904,) and Uncle Vanya (1896)—all these are now considered masterpiece dramas.

Chekhov also helped pioneer the modern short story form. He wrote over 600 stories before his death at age 44. He was one of the first short-story writers to explore characters instead of events. His stories lacked much of a plot. They did not have big emotional climaxes and typically concluded with a revelation of an intriguing feature of his characters’ lives.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Anton Chekhov

My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and absolute freedom.
—Anton Chekhov

One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making a mistake.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Success, Failure, Success & Failure, Mistakes

If you are afraid of loneliness, don’t marry.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Solitude

Reason and justice tell me there’s more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism.
—Anton Chekhov

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

Only entropy comes easy.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Adversity

To advise is not to compel.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Advice

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

There is no national science just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Science

Posterity will say as usual: “In the past things were better, the present is worse than the past”.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: The Past

Man is what he believes.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Thought, Believe, Thoughts, Thinking, Positive Attitudes, Belief, Optimism

There is nothing new in art except talent.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Talent

We shall find peace. We shall hear angels. We shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.
—Anton Chekhov

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

People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Existence

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

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

The secret of boring people lies in telling them everything.
—Anton Chekhov

When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can’t be cured.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Medicine

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.
—Anton Chekhov

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

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: Doctors, Lawyers

You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Trust

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

People should be beautiful in every way – in their faces, in the way they dress, in their thoughts and in their innermost selves.
—Anton Chekhov

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Action, Values, Knowledge

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

When an actor has money, he doesn’t send letters, but telegrams.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: Actors, Acting

The more refined one is, the more unhappy.
—Anton Chekhov
Topics: One liners, Unhappiness

You will not become a saint through other people’s sins.
—Anton Chekhov

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