Anton Chekhov: Trending quotes (page 7)

“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are laid waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever…. Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”

Anton Chekhov

Act I
Uncle Vanya (1897)

Bird , Tree , Animals

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

Anton Chekhov

Act I
Uncle Vanya (1897)

Hostility , World

“To regard one’s immortality as an exchange of matter is as strange as predicting the future of a violin case once the expensive violin it held has broken and lost its worth.”

Anton Chekhov

Ward No. 6, ch. 7 (1892)

Future

“Country acquaintances are charming only in the country and only in the summer. In the city in winter they lose half of their appeal.”

Anton Chekhov

The Story of Mme. NN or Lady N—'s Story or A Lady's Story (1887)

Winter , Summer , Country

“Lying is the same as alcoholism. Liars prevaricate even on their deathbeds.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.N. Pleshcheev (October 9, 1888)
Letters

Alcohol , Lying

“Life is difficult for those who have the daring to first set out on an unknown road. The avant-garde always has a bad time of it.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (May 14, 1889)
Letters

Life , Time

“"Why did you marry me into this family, mother?" said Lipa.
"One has to be married, daughter. It was not us who ordained it."”

Anton Chekhov book In the Ravine

Source: In the Ravine (1900), Ch. 5, pp. 212

Family , Daughters

“Everything is good in due measure and strong sensations know not measure.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to N.M. Lintvareva (February 11, 1889)
Letters

Strong

“And I thought that were we now to obtain political liberty, of which we talk so much, while engaged in biting one another, we should not know what to do with it, we should waste it in accusing one another in the newspapers of being spies and money-grubbers, we should frighten society with the assurance that we have neither men, nor science, nor literature, nothing! Nothing!”

Anton Chekhov

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

Men , Money , Literature , Science

“When in a serious mood, it seems to me that those people are illogical who feel an aversion toward death. As far as I can see, life consists exclusively of horrors, unpleasantnesses and banalities, now merging, now alternating.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to M.V. Kiseleva (September 29, 1886)
Letters

Life , Death , People , Feeling

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

Anton Chekhov book Gooseberries

Gooseberries (1898)

Money , Personality

“One can only call that youth healthful which refuses to be reconciled to old ways and which, foolishly or shrewdly, combats the old. This is nature’s charge and all progress hinges upon it.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (March 29, 1890)
Letters

Health , Youth , Way , Nature

“The person who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, and fears nothing can never be an artist.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (November 25, 1892)
Letters

Fear , Hope , Personality

“You look at any poetic creature: muslin, ether, demigoddess, millions of delights; then you look into the soul and find the most ordinary crocodile!”

Anton Chekhov

The Bear or The Boor, sc. viii (1888)

Soul

“There are people whom even children’s literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to M.V. Kiseleva (January 14, 1887)
Letters

Wisdom , Children , People , Literature

“I myself smoke, but my wife asked me to speak today on the harmfulness of tobacco, so what can I do? If it’s tobacco, then let it be tobacco.”

Anton Chekhov

On the Harmfulness of Tobacco (1886)

“How intolerable people are sometimes who are happy and successful in everything.”

Anton Chekhov

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

People , Success , Happiness

“He who doesn’t know how to be a servant should never be allowed to be a master; the interests of public life are alien to anyone who is unable to enjoy others’ successes, and such a person should never be entrusted with public affairs.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.N. Pleshcheev (October 25, 1888)
Letters

Life , Success , Personality

“It doesn’t matter that your painting is small. Kopecks are also small, but when a lot are put together they make a ruble. Each painting displayed in a gallery and each good book that makes it into a library, no matter how small they may be, serve a great cause: accretion of the national wealth.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to S.P. Kuvshinnikova (December 25, 1888)
Letters

Books , Painting , Wealth

“One must speak about serious things seriously.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.N. Pleshcheev (September 9, 1888)
Letters