Anton Chekhov: Trending quotes

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Anton Chekhov: 444   quotes 5   likes

“The world is a fine place. The only thing wrong with it is us. How little justice and humility there is in us, how poorly we understand patriotism!”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (December 9, 1890)
Letters

World , Justice , Understanding

“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.”

Anton Chekhov

Fatherlessness or Platonov, Act I, sc. xiv (1878)

Life , Personality

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

Anton Chekhov

Letter to the Chekhov family (April 25, 1887)
Letters

Girl , Time

“If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.”

Anton Chekhov

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

Loneliness

“There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.”

Anton Chekhov

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

Science

“Somewhere far away a bittern cried, a hollow, melancholy sound like a cow shut up in a barn. The cry of that mysterious bird was heard every spring, but no one knew what it was like or where it lived. At the top of the hill by the hospital, in the bushes close to the pond, and in the fields the nightingales were trilling. The cuckoo kept reckoning someone's years and losing count and beginning again. In the pond the frogs called angrily to one another, straining themselves to bursting, and one could even make out the words: "That's what you are! That's what you are!" What a noise there was! It seemed as though all these creatures were singing and shouting so that no one might sleep on that spring night, so that all, even the angry frogs, might appreciate and enjoy every minute: life is given only once.”

Anton Chekhov book In the Ravine

Source: In the Ravine (1900), Ch. 8, pp. 224

Life , Spring , Bird , Sleep

“Thought and beauty, like a hurricane or waves, should not know conventional, delimited forms.”

Anton Chekhov

Мысль и красота, подобно урагану и волнам, не должны знать привычных, определенных форм.
A Letter (uncertain date, story not published by Chekhov)

Beauty

“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.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to K.S. Barantsevich (March 3, 1888)
Letters

Money , Pain , Happiness

“We fret ourselves to reform life, in order that posterity may be happy, and posterity will say as usual: "In the past it used to be better, the present is worse than the past."”

Anton Chekhov

Alternate translation: 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.
Мы хлопочем, чтобы изменить жизнь, чтобы потомки были счастливы, а потомки скажут по обыкновению: прежде лучше было, теперешняя жизнь хуже прежней.
Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

Life , Past , Happiness

“Writers are as jealous as pigeons.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to I.L. Leontev (February 4, 1888)
Letters

“My mother and father are the only people on the whole planet for whom I will never begrudge a thing. Should I achieve great things, it is the work of their hands; they are splendid people and their absolute love of their children places them above the highest praise. It cloaks all of their shortcomings, shortcomings that may have resulted from a difficult life.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to his cousin, M.M. Chekhov (July 29, 1877)
Letters

Love , Life , Children , People

“Do you remember you shot a seagull? A man came by chance, saw it and destroyed it, just to pass the time.”

Anton Chekhov

Act IV
The Seagull (1896)

Chance , Time

“Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.”

Anton Chekhov book Misfortune

Misfortune (1886)

People , Feeling , Understanding , Time

“Tell mother that however dogs and samovars might behave themselves, winter comes after summer, old age after youth, and misfortune follows happiness (or the other way around). A person can not be healthy and cheerful throughout life. Losses lie waiting and man can not safeguard against death, even if he be Alexander of Macedonia. One must be prepared for anything and consider everything to be inevitably essential, as sad as that may be.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to his sister Maria Pavlovna Chekhov (November 13, 1898)
Letters

Life , Death , Lie , Youth

“Crutch is coming! Crutch! The old horseradish.”

Anton Chekhov book In the Ravine

Source: In the Ravine (1900), Ch. 5, p. 206

“The more simply we look at ticklish questions, the more placid will be our lives and relationships.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to his brother, A.P. Chekhov (September 24, 1888)
Letters

Question

“In my opinion it is harmful to place important things in the hands of philanthropy, which in Russia is marked by a chance character. Nor should important matters depend on leftovers, which are never there. I would prefer that the government treasury take care of it.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (December 17, 1890)
Letters

Chance , Dependency

“When you live on cash, you understand the limits of the world around which you navigate each day. Credit leads into a desert with invisible boundaries.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (August 18, 1893)
Letters

World , Understanding

“All great sages are as despotic as generals, and as ungracious and indelicate as generals, because they are confident of their impunity.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (September 8, 1891)
Letters

Confidence

“I feel more confident and more satisfied when I reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it's disorderly it's not so dull, and besides, neither really loses anything, through my infidelity.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (September 11, 1888)
Letters

Law , Feeling , Confidence , Literature