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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

To Moscow, to Moscow, to Moscow!

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

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

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

Everyone has the same God; only people differ.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Hypocrisy is a revolting, psychopathic state.

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.

Wisdom.... comes not from age, but from education and learning.

The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.

It's not a matter of old or new forms; a person writes without thinking about any forms, he writes because it flows freely from his soul.

The problem is that we attempt to solve the simplest questions cleverly, thereby rendering them unusually complex. One should seekthe simple solution.

Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions.

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.

Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric.

Common hypocrites pass themselves off as doves; political and literary hypocrites pose as eagles. But don't be fooled by their eagle-like appearance. These are not eagles, but rats or dogs.

Try to reason about love, and you will lose your reason.

We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.

He is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.

When all is said and done, no literature can outdo the cynicism of real life; you won't intoxicate with one glass someone who has already drunk up a whole barrel.