Reported in Thomas Jones, The Duties of Man and Other Essays (1915), page 61
“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.”
Letter to his brother, A.P. Chekhov (January 2, 1889)
Letters
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Anton Chekhov 222
Russian dramatist, author and physician 1860–1904Related quotes
As quoted in Treasury of Thought : Forming an encyclopædia of quotation from ancient and modern authors (1894) edited by Maturin Murray Ballou, p. 123
“Angels’ song, comforting
as the comfort of Christ
When he spake tenderly
to his sorrowful flock.”
Noel Christmas Eve 1913.
Poetry
A New Testament (1927)
Context: We have not approached the time when we may speak to each other, but in the mornings sometimes I have heard, echoing far off, the sound of a trumpet. It is apparent that nations cannot exist for us. They are the playthings of children, such toys as children break from boredom and weariness. The branch of a tree is my country. My freedom sleeps in a mulberry bush. My country is in the shivering legs of a little lost dog.
“This is growing up, having to stomp out love, this is how people turn terrible.”
At a Good Friday devotion, the Stations of the Cross, in 2005, seen by many as a statement about the clergy sex abuse scandal
2005