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Anton Chekhov Quotes
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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text".Chekhov had at first written stories to earn money, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them. Wikipedia  

✵ 17. January 1860 – 2. July 1904  •  Other names Anton Čechov, Anton Pawlowitsch Tschechow
Anton Chekhov photo
Anton Chekhov: 222 quotes5 likes

Anton Chekhov Quotes

“A nice man would feel ashamed even before a dog.”

Anton Chekhov

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

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

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (November 1889)
Letters

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

Anton Chekhov book The Princess

The Princess (1889)

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

Anton Chekhov

Letter to N.A. Leikin (May 8, 1895)
Letters

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

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (February 23, 1890)
Letters

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

Anton Chekhov

Letter to I.L. Leontev (March 22, 1890)
Letters

“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)

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

Anton Chekhov

Act I
Uncle Vanya (1897)

“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)

“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)

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

Anton Chekhov

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

“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

“"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

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

Anton Chekhov

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

“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)

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

Anton Chekhov book Gooseberries

Gooseberries (1898)

“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

“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

“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)

“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

“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)

“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

“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

“One must speak about serious things seriously.”

Anton Chekhov

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

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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

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

Anton Chekhov

Letter to L.A. Avilova (February 26, 1899)
Letters

“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.”

Anton Chekhov

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

“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.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to his brother, A.P. Chekhov (October 13, 1888)
Letters

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

Anton Chekhov

Act IV
Uncle Vanya (1897)

“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.”

Anton Chekhov

Act III
The Cherry Orchard (1904)

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

Anton Chekhov

Source: Letter to A.S. Suvorin (November 18, 1891)

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

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (March 11, 1892)
Letters

“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.”

Anton Chekhov

Act I
The Cherry Orchard (1904)