Anton Chekhov: Quotes about people

Anton Chekhov was Russian dramatist, author and physician. Explore interesting quotes on people.
Anton Chekhov: 444 quotes5 likes

“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

“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)

“It is uncomfortable to ask condemned people about their sentences just as it is awkward to ask wealthy people why they need so much money, why they use their wealth so poorly, and why they don’t just get rid of it when they recognize that it is the cause of their unhappiness.”

Anton Chekhov

Episode from a Practice or A Doctor's Visit (1898)

“I have no faith in our hypocritical, false, hysterical, uneducated and lazy intelligentsia when they suffer and complain: their oppression comes from within. I believe in individual people. I see salvation in discrete individuals, intellectuals and peasants, strewn hither and yon throughout Russia. They have the strength, although there are few of them.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to I.I. Orlov (February 22, 1899)
Letters

“People should be beautiful in every way—in their faces, in the way they dress, in their thoughts and in their innermost selves.”

Anton Chekhov

Act I
Uncle Vanya (1897)

“If there's any illness for which people offer many remedies, you may be sure that particular illness is incurable, I think.”

Anton Chekhov

Act I
The Cherry Orchard (1904)

“It’s even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday.”

Anton Chekhov

The Story of an Unknown Man or An Anonymous Story, ch. 15 (1893)

“People understand God as the expression of the most lofty morality. Maybe He needs only perfect people.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to E.M. Shavrova (April 6, 1892)
Letters

“I observed that after marriage people cease to be curious.”

Anton Chekhov

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

“The unhappy are egotistical, base, unjust, cruel, and even less capable of understanding one another than are idiots. Unhappiness does not unite people, but separates them…”

Anton Chekhov

Несчастные эгоистичны, злы, несправедливы, жестоки и менее, чем глупцы, способны понимать друг друга. Не соединяет, а разъединяет людей несчастье...
Enemies

“I have in my head a whole army of people pleading to be let out and awaiting my commands.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (October 27, 1888)
Letters

“People love talking of their diseases, although they are the most uninteresting things in their lives.”

Anton Chekhov

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

“One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that they’ll be proving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven.”

Anton Chekhov

Lights (1888)

“By nature servile, people attempt at first glance to find signs of good breeding in the appearance of those who occupy more exalted stations.”

Anton Chekhov

A Futile Occurrence or A Trivial Incident (1886)

“Everyone has the same God; only people differ.”

Anton Chekhov book The Duel

The Duel (1891)

“Although you may tell lies, people will believe you, if only you speak with authority.”

Anton Chekhov

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

“Do you know when you may concede your insignificance? Before God or, perhaps, before the intellect, beauty, or nature, but not before people. Among people, one must be conscious of one’s dignity.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to his brother, M.P. Chekhov (April 1879)
Original: Ничтожество свое сознавай, знаешь где? Перед богом, пожалуй, пред умом, красотой, природой, но не пред людьми. Среди людей нужно сознавать свое достоинство.

“In Western Europe people perish from the congestion and stifling closeness, but with us it is from the spaciousness…. The expanses are so great that the little man hasn’t the resources to orient himself…. This is what I think about Russian suicides.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to D.V. Grigorovich (February 5, 1888)
Letters

“When we retreat to the country, we are hiding not from people, but from our pride, which, in the city and among people, operates unfairly and immoderately.”

Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (March 17, 1892)
Letters

“Death can only be profitable: there’s no need to eat, drink, pay taxes, offend people, and since a person lies in a grave for hundreds or thousands of years, if you count it up the profit turns out to be enormous.”

Anton Chekhov

Rothschild’s Fiddle (1894)