Anton Chekhov Quotes

In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations!

I am not a liberal, not a conservative, not a believer in gradual progress, not a monk. I should like to be a free artist and nothing more.

If you look at anything long enough, say just that wall in front of you - it will come out of that wall.

By poeticizing love, we imagine in those we love virtues that they often do not possess; this then becomes the source of constant mistakes and constant distress.

It is the writer's business not to accuse and not to prosecute, but to champion the guilty, once they are condemned and suffer punishment.

A fiancé is neither this nor that: he's left one shore, but not yet reached the other.

All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart stands still.

Advertising is the very essence of democracy.

Ah, Caviar! I keep on eating it, but can never get my fill. Like olives. It's a lucky thing it's not salty.

Dear and most respected bookcase! I welcome your existence, which has for over one hundred years been devoted to the radiant ideals of goodness and justice.

I've never been in love. I've dreamt of it day and night, but my heart is like a fine piano no one can play because the key is lost.

The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can't return even if it wants to.

The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.

If you ever have need of my life, come and take it.

The happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burden in silence. Without this silence, happiness would be impossible.

Life has gone by as if I never lived

Revolting means for good ends make the ends of themselves revolting.

One must speak about serious things seriously.

Do you know when you may concede your insignificance? Before God or, perhaps, before the intellect, beauty, or nature, but not before people. Among people, one must be conscious of one's dignity.

Women writers should write a lot if they want to write. Take the English women, for example. What amazing workers.

Your talent sets you apart: if you were a toad or a tarantula, even then, people would respect you, for to talent all things are forgiven.

In descriptions of nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture.

I'm in mourning for my life.

I am dying. I haven't drunk champagne for a long time.

Just as I shall lie alone in the grave, so, in essence, do I live alone.

A sweet lie is more gracious for us than a virulent but real truth.

An artist observes, selects, guesses, and synthesizes.

Probably nature itself gave man the ability to lie so that in difficult and tense moments he could protect his nest, just as do the vixen and wild duck.

I confess I seldom commune with my conscience when I write.

If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.

We go to great pains to alter life for the happiness of our descendants and our descendants will say as usual: things used to be so much better, life today is worse than it used to be.

If there's a gun on the wall in act one, scene one, you must fire the gun by act three, scene two. If you fire a gun in act three, scene two, you must see the gun on the wall in act one, scene one.

A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.

It's easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.

A hungry dog believes in nothing but meat.

The sea has neither meaning nor pity.

It is easy to be a philosopher in academia, but it is very difficult to be a philosopher in life.

When men ask me how I know so much about men, they get a simple answer: everything I know about men, I learned from me.

Every coming year is as bad as the previous one, the only difference being that in most cases it is even worse.

It's even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday.

That can not possibly be, because it could never possibly be.

Then I feel so happy and at the same time so sad, it's unimaginable.

Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given.

Fine. Since the tea is not forthcoming, let's have a philosophical conversation.

I was so drunk the whole time that I took bottles for girls and girls for bottles.

Write about this man who, drop by drop, squeezes the slave's blood out of himself until he wakes one day to find the blood of a real human being--not a slave's--coursing through his veins.

Nothing lulls and inebriates like money; when you have a lot, the world seems a better place than it actually is.

Our pride and self-importance are European, while our development and actions are Asiatic.

How unbearable at times are people who are happy, people for whom everything works out.

One usually dislikes a play while writing it, but afterward it grows on one. Let others judge and make decisions.