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Anton Tchekhov citations
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Anton Pavlovitch Tchekhov ou Tchékhov , né le 17 janvier 1860 à Taganrog et mort le 15 juillet 1904 à Badenweiler , est un écrivain russe, principalement nouvelliste et dramaturge.

Tout en exerçant sa profession de médecin, il publie entre 1880 et 1903 plus de 600 œuvres littéraires ; certaines pièces souvent mises en scène à l'heure actuelle — La Mouette, La Cerisaie, Oncle Vania — font de lui l’un des auteurs les plus connus de la littérature russe, notamment pour sa façon de décrire la vie dans la province russe à la fin du XIXe siècle.

Ami d’Ivan Bounine, de Maxime Gorki, de Fédor Chaliapine, d'Alexeï Souvorine, il est l’oncle de Mikhaïl Tchekhov, et le frère du peintre russe Nikolaï Tchekhov. Wikipedia  

✵ 17. janvier 1860 – 2. juillet 1904  •  Autres noms Anton Čechov, Anton Pawlowitsch Tschechow
Anton Tchekhov photo
Anton Tchekhov: 223 citations0 J'aime

Anton Tchekhov Citations

“Lopakhine : Excusez-moi, mais des gens aussi légers que vous, Mesdames et Messieurs, aussi peu doués pour les affaires, aussi étranges, je n'en ai jamais rencontré.
On vous dit clairement que votre propriété sera vendue, et c'est comme si vous ne compreniez pas.”

Anton Tchekhov La Cerisaie

La Cerisaie (Вишнёвый сад), 1904

Anton Tchekhov: Citations en anglais

“When a person doesn’t understand something, he feels internal discord: however he doesn’t search for that discord in himself, as he should, but searches outside of himself. Thence a war develops with that which he doesn’t understand.”

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Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (May 15, 1889)
Letters

“How pleasant it is to respect people! When I see books, I am not concerned with how the authors loved or played cards; I see only their marvelous works.”

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Anton Chekhov

Какое наслаждение уважать людей! Когда я вижу книги, мне нет дела до того, как авторы любили, играли в карты, я вижу только их изумительные дела.
Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

“Hypocrisy is a revolting, psychopathic state.”

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Anton Chekhov

Letter to I.L. Leontev (August 29, 1888)
Letters

“Yes, that's how it is, child. He who works, he who is patient is the superior.”

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Anton Chekhov livre In the Ravine

Source: In the Ravine (1900), Ch. 5, pp. 208

“Despite your best efforts, you could not invent a better police force for literature than criticism and the author’s own conscience.”

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Anton Chekhov

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

“In one-act pieces there should be only rubbish—that is their strength.”

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Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (January 6, 1889)
Letters

“There are in life such confluences of circumstances that render the reproach that we are not Voltaires most inopportune.”

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Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (February 6, 1898)
Letters

“The wealthy man is not he who has money, but he who has the means to live in the luxurious state of early spring.”

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Anton Chekhov

Letter to L.A. Avilova (April 29, 1892)
Letters

“By all means I will be married if you wish it. But on these conditions: everything must be as it has been hitherto—that is, she must live in Moscow while I live in the country, and I will come and see her. … I promise to be an excellent husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, will not appear every day in my sky.”

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Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (March 23, 1895)
Letters

“Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.”

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Anton Chekhov

Alternate translation: Nothing better forges a bond of love, friendship or respect than common hatred toward something.
Also quoted in Psychologically Speaking: A Book of Quotations, Kevin Connolly and Margaret Martlew, 1999, p. 96
Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

“All Russia is our orchard.”

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Anton Chekhov

Act II
The Cherry Orchard (1904)

“Everyone judges plays as if they were very easy to write. They don’t know that it is hard to write a good play, and twice as hard and tortuous to write a bad one.”

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Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (May 4, 1889)
Letters

“"Why do I love him so much, mamma? Why do I feel so sorry for him?" she went on in a quivering voice, and her eyes glistened with tears. "Who is he? What is he like? As light as a little feather, as a little crumb, but I love him; I love him like a real person. Here he can do nothing, he can't talk, and yet I know what he wants with his little eyes."”

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Anton Chekhov livre In the Ravine

Source: In the Ravine (1900), Ch. 6, pp. 216

“While you’re playing cards with a regular guy or having a bite to eat with him, he seems a peaceable, good-humoured and not entirely dense person. But just begin a conversation with him about something inedible, politics or science, for instance, and he ends up in a deadend or starts in on such an obtuse and base philosophy that you can only wave your hand and leave.”

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Anton Chekhov

Ionych (1898)

“Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.”

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Anton Chekhov

In a Native Corner or At Home (1897)

“Between "there is a God" and "there is no God" lies a whole vast tract, which the really wise man crosses with great effort. A Russian knows one or other of these two extremes, and the middle tract between them does not interest him; and therefore he usually knows nothing, or very little.”

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Anton Chekhov

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

“There are no lower or higher or median moralities. There is only one morality, and it is precisely the one that was given to us during the time of Jesus Christ and that stops me, you and Barantsevich from stealing, offending others, lying etc.”

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Anton Chekhov

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

“One had better not rush, otherwise dung comes out rather than creative work.”

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Anton Chekhov

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (August 18, 1891)
Letters

“Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one who kills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years?”

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Anton Chekhov livre The Bet

The Bet (1889)

“If you really think about it, everything is wonderful in this world, everything except for our thoughts and deeds when we forget about the loftier goals of existence, about our human dignity.”

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Anton Chekhov livre The Lady with the Dog

The Lady with the Dog (1899)

“Nature’s law says that the strong must prevent the weak from living, but only in a newspaper article or textbook can this be packaged into a comprehensible thought. In the soup of everyday life, in the mixture of minutia from which human relations are woven, it is not a law. It is a logical incongruity when both strong and weak fall victim to their mutual relations, unconsciously subservient to some unknown guiding power that stands outside of life, irrelevant to man.”

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Anton Chekhov

Episode from a Practice

“[Ognev] recalled endless, heated, purely Russian arguments, when the wranglers, spraying spittle and banging their fists on the table, fail to understand yet interrupt one another, themselves not even noticing it, contradict themselves with every phrase, change the subject, then, having argued for two or three hours, begin to laugh.”

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Anton Chekhov livre Verotchka

Verotchka (1887)

“Children are holy and pure. Even those of bandits and crocodiles belong among the angels…. They must not be turned into a plaything of one’s mood, first to be tenderly kissed, then rabidly stomped at.”

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Anton Chekhov

Letter to his brother, A.P. Chekhov (January 2, 1889)
Letters

“"Grigory Petrovitch, let us weep, let us weep with joy!" he said in a thin voice, and then at once burst out laughing in a loud bass guffaw. "Ho-ho-ho! This is a fine daughter-in-law for you too! Everything is in its place in her; all runs smoothly, no creaking, the mechanism works well, lots of screws in it."”

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Anton Chekhov livre In the Ravine

Source: In the Ravine (1900), Ch. 3, pp. 193-4

“My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence and lies, no matter what form the latter two take. Such is the program I would adhere to if I were a major artist.”

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Anton Chekhov

Letter to Alexei Pleshcheev (October 4, 1888)
Letters

“She read a lot, wrote letters without the letter ъ, …”

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Anton Chekhov livre The Lady with the Dog

Она много читала, не писала въ письмахъ ъ, …
The Lady with the Dog

“Those who come a hundred or two hundred years after us will despise us for having lived our lives so stupidly and tastelessly. Perhaps they’ll find a means to be happy.”

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Anton Chekhov

Act IV
Uncle Vanya (1897)

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