Anton Chekhov: Trending quotes

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Anton Chekhov: 444 quotes5 likes

“Eyes—the head’s chief of police. They watch and make mental notes. A blind person is like a city abandoned by the authorities. On sad days they cry. In these carefree times they weep only from tender emotions.”

Anton Chekhov

A Brief Human Anatomy (1883)

“At the door of every happy person there should be a man with a hammer whose knock would serve as a constant reminder of the existence of unfortunate people.”

Anton Chekhov book Gooseberries

Gooseberries (1898)

“Ordinary hypocrites pretend to be doves; political and literary hypocrites pretend to be eagles. But don't be disconcerted by their aquiline appearance. They are not eagles, but rats or dogs.”

Anton Chekhov

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

“Isolation in creative work is an onerous thing. Better to have negative criticism than nothing at all.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to his brother, A.P. Chekhov (May 10, 1886)
Original: Одиночество в творчестве тяжелая штука. Лучше плохая критика, чем ничего…

“As I shall lie in the grave alone, so in fact I live alone.”

Anton Chekhov

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

“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.”

Anton Chekhov

In the Cart or A Journey by Cart or The Schoolmistress (1897)

“I can’t accept “our nervous age,” since mankind has been nervous during every age. Whoever fears nervousness should turn into a sturgeon or smelt; if a sturgeon makes a stupid mistake, it can only be one: to end up on a hook, and then in a pan in a pastry shell.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to E.M. Savrova-Yust (February 28, 1895)
Letters

“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.”

Anton Chekhov

Ariadne (1895)

“It seems to me that all of the evil in life comes from idleness, boredom, and psychic emptiness, but all of that is inevitable when you become accustomed to living at others’ expense.”

Anton Chekhov book My Life

My Life (1896)

“When a person expends the least amount of motion on one action, that is grace.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to Maxim Gorky (January 3, 1899)
Letters

“Mankind has conceived history as a series of battles; hitherto it has considered fighting as the main thing in life.”

Anton Chekhov

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

“The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on; science and art are as well.”

Anton Chekhov

A Dreary Story or A Tedious Story (1889)

“Love is a scandal of the personal sort.”

Anton Chekhov

The Piano Player (1885)

“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.”

Anton Chekhov book The Bet

The Bet (1889)

“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. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples’ character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe…. What a terrible future!”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (October 18, 1888)
Letters

“No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith.”

Anton Chekhov

A Journey to Sakhalin

“There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to V.A. Posse (February 15, 1900)
Letters

“Good breeding doesn't mean that you won't spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won't notice when someone else does.”

Anton Chekhov book The House with the Mezzanine

The House with the Mezzanine (1896)

“Dinner at the "Continental" to commemorate the great reform [the abolition of the serfdom in 1861]. Tedious and incongruous. To dine, drink champagne, make a racket, and deliver speeches about national consciousness, the conscience of the people, freedom, and such things, while slaves in tail-coats are running round your tables, veritable serfs, and your coachmen wait outside in the street, in the bitter cold—that is lying to the Holy Ghost.”

Anton Chekhov

Diary, 9 February 1897
Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

“Despicable means used to achieve laudable goals render the goals themselves despicable.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (August 1, 1892)
Letters