Anton Pavlovics Csehov idézet

„A szeretet, a barátság, a tisztelet nem egyesíti annyira az embereket, mint a közös gyűlölet valami iránt.”

„Ha félsz a magánytól, ne menj férjhez.”

„Az emberek nem veszik észre, hogy tél vagy nyár van, amikor boldogok.”

„Trepljov:) Nem olyannak kell ábrázolni az életet, amilyen, nem is olyannak, amilyennek lennie kellene, hanem olyannak, ahogy álmainkban megjelenik.
(1. felvonás. 339. oldal”

„Mása:) Ha nem tudnak mást mondani, akkor ezt hajtogatják: fiatalság, fiatalság…
(1. felvonás. 350. oldal”

„A boldogtalan ember egoista, dühös, igazságtalan, kegyetlen, és még az ostobánál is kevésbé hajlamos embertársai megértésére. A szerencsétlenség nem fűzi össze, hanem elválasztja egymástól az embereket, még ott is, ahol a hasonló fájdalom összekötő kapocsként szerepelhetne.”

„…gondolkodunk: egymásban olyan embert látunk, aki gondolkodásra, okoskodásra képes, és ez szolidárissá tesz bennünket, akármilyen különbözőek legyenek is nézeteink.”

„A doktor mondja barátjának:) Egész betegségem abban áll, hogy húsz év alatt ebben a városban csak egyetlenegy okos embert találtam, és az is őrült. Egyáltalán nem vagyok beteg, csak zsákutcába jutottam, és nem találok kiutat.
(A 6-os számú kórterem, 9. fejezet, 243-244. oldal; ford.: Szőllősy Klára”

„Okos, becsületes embereknek mindig van hova menniök.”

„A szabad és elmélyedt gondolkodás, amely az élet megértésére törekszik, és a világ gyarló hiúságának teljes megvetése: két olyan áldás, amelynél nagyobbat ember sohasem ismert.”

„Trigorin:) Mindenki úgy ír, ahogy akar, és ahogy tud.
(1. felvonás. 345. oldal”

„Ragin doktor mondja a kórterem betegének, Gromovnak:) Minden a véletlenen múlik. Akit becsuktak, az itt ül, akit nem csuktak be, az szabadon járkál, ennyi az egész. Abban, hogy én orvos vagyok, maga pedig elmebeteg, nincsen semmi logika, sem erkölcsi színvonal, hanem csupán véletlen, esetlegesség … …
Ha egyszer csináltak bolondokházát, akkor valakinek ülnie is kell benne.
(A 6-os számú kórterem, 9. fejezet, 216-217. oldal; ford.: Szőllősy Klára”

„Trepljov:) A nők sohasem bocsátják meg a kudarcot.
(2. felvonás. 360. oldal”

„Asztrov:) Azok, akik utánunk majd száz vagy kétszáz esztendő múlva élnek, és akik majd lenéznek bennünket azért, mert ilyen ostobán és ilyen ízléstelenül éltük le az életünket – azok talán megtalálják a módját, hogyan lehetnek boldogok, de mi… Nekünk már csak egy reményünk van. Az a remény, hogy ha majd a sírban nyugszunk, meglátogatnak a kísértetek, talán éppen kellemes kísértetek.
(4. felvonás, 466. oldal”

„Trigorin:) Én nem láttam az olvasómat, de valahogy mindig barátságtalannak, bizalmatlannak képzeltem el..
(2. felvonás. 364. oldal”

„Úgy néz le rám, mint óriás a törpére. De hátha tényleg óriás?”

„Nyina:)… mindegy, akár a színpadon játszunk, akár írunk - nem a hírnév, nem a ragyogás a fő… hanem az, hogy tudjunk tűrni.
(4. felvonás. 401. oldal”

„Irina:) Jön majd idő, mikor mindnyájan megtudjuk, miért mindez, miért ez a sok szenvedés, és akkor nem lesz többé titok … Addig azonban élnünk kell és dolgoznunk. Mindig, mindig dolgoznunk!
(4. felvonás, befejező jelenet, 572-573. oldal”

“There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.”

“The world is a fine place. The only thing wrong with it is us. How little justice and humility there is in us, how poorly we understand patriotism!”

“I was so drunk the whole time that I took bottles for girls and girls for bottles.”

“Somewhere far away a bittern cried, a hollow, melancholy sound like a cow shut up in a barn. The cry of that mysterious bird was heard every spring, but no one knew what it was like or where it lived. At the top of the hill by the hospital, in the bushes close to the pond, and in the fields the nightingales were trilling. The cuckoo kept reckoning someone's years and losing count and beginning again. In the pond the frogs called angrily to one another, straining themselves to bursting, and one could even make out the words: "That's what you are! That's what you are!" What a noise there was! It seemed as though all these creatures were singing and shouting so that no one might sleep on that spring night, so that all, even the angry frogs, might appreciate and enjoy every minute: life is given only once.”

“Thought and beauty, like a hurricane or waves, should not know conventional, delimited forms.”

“Happiness does not await us all. One needn’t be a prophet to say that there will be more grief and pain than serenity and money. That is why we must hang on to one another.”

“We fret ourselves to reform life, in order that posterity may be happy, and posterity will say as usual: "In the past it used to be better, the present is worse than the past."”

“Writers are as jealous as pigeons.”

“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.”

“Do you remember you shot a seagull? A man came by chance, saw it and destroyed it, just to pass the time.”

“Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.”

“Tell mother that however dogs and samovars might behave themselves, winter comes after summer, old age after youth, and misfortune follows happiness (or the other way around). A person can not be healthy and cheerful throughout life. Losses lie waiting and man can not safeguard against death, even if he be Alexander of Macedonia. One must be prepared for anything and consider everything to be inevitably essential, as sad as that may be.”

“Crutch is coming! Crutch! The old horseradish.”

“The more simply we look at ticklish questions, the more placid will be our lives and relationships.”

“In my opinion it is harmful to place important things in the hands of philanthropy, which in Russia is marked by a chance character. Nor should important matters depend on leftovers, which are never there. I would prefer that the government treasury take care of it.”

“When you live on cash, you understand the limits of the world around which you navigate each day. Credit leads into a desert with invisible boundaries.”

“All great sages are as despotic as generals, and as ungracious and indelicate as generals, because they are confident of their impunity.”

“I feel more confident and more satisfied when I reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it's disorderly it's not so dull, and besides, neither really loses anything, through my infidelity.”

“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.”

“There is nothing more vapid than a philistine petty bourgeois existence with its farthings, victuals, vacuous conversations, and useless conventional virtue.”

“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.”

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

“It’s easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.”

“Death is terrible, but still more terrible is the feeling that you might live for ever and never die.”

“Prudence and justice tell me that in electricity and steam there is more love for man than in chastity and abstinence from meat.”

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

“It is a poor thing for the writer to take on that which he doesn’t understand.”

“Tsars and slaves, the intelligent and the obtuse, publicans and pharisees all have an identical legal and moral right to honor the memory of the deceased as they see fit, without regard for anyone else’s opinion and without the fear of hindering one another.”

“It is easier to ask of the poor than of the rich.”