Anton Chekhov Quotes

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“Without a knowledge of languages you feel as if you don’t have a passport.”

“If you can’t distinguish people from lap-dogs, you shouldn’t undertake philanthropic work.”

“A man who doesn’t drink is not, in my opinion, fully a man.”

“In general, Russia suffers from a frightening poverty in the sphere of facts and a frightening wealth of all types of arguments.”

“I divide all literary works into two categories: Those I like and those I don’t like. No other criterion exists for me.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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!”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“One must speak about serious things seriously.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“Love is a scandal of the personal sort.”

“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.”

“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!”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“Love is a great thing. It is not by chance that in all times and practically among all cultured peoples love in the general sense and the love of a man for his wife are both called love. If love is often cruel or destructive, the reason lies not in love itself, but in the inequality between people.”

“There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and simplicity in our interactions. Be rude when you’re angry, laugh when something is funny, and answer when you’re asked.”

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

“The cherry orchard is now mine!… I bought the estate on which my grandfather and father were slaves, where they were not even permitted in the kitchen.”

“Can words such as Orthodox, Jew, or Catholic really express some sort of exclusive personal virtues or merits?”

“An expansive life, one not constrained by four walls, requires as well an expansive pocket.”

“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.”