Anton Chekhov famous quotes

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Knowledge #Technology #Practice

The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Tasks #Problem #States

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

#People #May #Dignity

What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Weather #Tea #Today

You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Horse #Lying #Taken

Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Friendship #Respect #Hate

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Life #Success #Morning

Everything on earth is beautiful, everything -- except what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own human dignity.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Beauty #Beautiful #Thinking

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

#People #Awkward #Needs

For God's sake, have some self-respect and do not run off at the mouth if your brain is out to lunch.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Running #Lunch #Self

Do silly things. Foolishness is a great deal more vital and healthy than our straining and striving after a meaningful life.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Meaningful #Silly #Healthy

I abide by a rule concerning reviews: I will never ask, neither in writing nor in person, that a word be put in about my book.... One feels cleaner this way. When someone asks that his book be reviewed he risks running up against a vulgarity offensive to authorial sensibilities.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Running #Book #Writing

We are accustomed to live in hopes of good weather, a good harvest, a nice love-affair, hopes of becoming rich or getting the office of chief of police, but I've never noticed anyone hoping to get wiser. We say to ourselves: it'll be better under a new tsar, and in two hundred years it'll still be better, and nobody tries to make this good time come tomorrow. On the whole, life gets more and more complex every day and moves on its own sweet will, and people get more and more stupid, and get isolated from life in ever-increasing numbers.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Sweet #Nice #Stupid

The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.
-- Anton Chekhov

#World #Existentialism #Metaphysics

Life is given only once, and one wants to live it boldly, with full conscious and beauty.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Want #Life Is #Conscious

..when one has no real life, one lives by mirages. It's still better than nothing.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Real #Mirages #Live By

Hypocrisy is a revolting, psychopathic state.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Hypocrisy #States #Psychopathic

Wisdom.... comes not from age, but from education and learning.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Inspirational #Education #Age

Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Love #Feelings #Self Improvement

Man is what he believes.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Inspirational #Motivational #Believe

We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Peace #Inspiration #Losing A Loved One

The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Art #Artist #Roles

Man will become better when you show him what he is like.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Men #Insight #Shows

Here I am with you & yet not for a single moment do I forget that there's an unfinished novel waiting for me.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Waiting #Forget #Moments

I don’t understand anything about the ballet; all I know is that during the intervals the ballerinas stink like horses.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Horse #Ballet #Ballerina

Cross out as many adjectives and adverbs as you can. ... It is comprehensible when I write: "The man sat on the grass," because it is clear and does not detain one's attention. On the other hand, it is difficult to figure out and hard on the brain if I write: "The tall, narrow-chested man of medium height and with a red beard sat down on the green grass that had already been trampled down by the pedestrians, sat down silently, looking around timidly and fearfully." The brain can't grasp all that at once, and art must be grasped at once, instantaneously.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Art #Writing #Men

Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Canaries #Pious

Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Appreciation #Nature #Adversity

In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations!
-- Anton Chekhov

#Character #Psychology #Essentials

If ever my life can be of any use to you, come and claim it.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Use #Claims

If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Wall #Gun #Fire

Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Drama #Wife #Mistress

I promise to be an excellent husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, will not appear every day in my sky.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Husband #Moon #Sky

The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Inspirational #Life #Illusion

It is not only the prisoners who grow coarse and hardened from corporal punishment, but those as well who perpetrate the act or are present to witness it.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Math #Punishment #Coarse

These people have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and wild herbs.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Teacher #Book #Rivers

Three o'clock in the morning. The soft April night is looking at my windows and caressingly winking at me with its stars. I can't sleep, I am so happy.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Morning #Stars #Sleep

In nature a repulsive caterpillar turns into a lovely butterfly. But with human beings it is the other way round: a lovely butterfly turns into a repulsive caterpillar.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Nature #Butterfly #Lovely

Do you see that tree? It is dead but it still sways in the wind with the others. I think it would be like that with me. That if I died I would still be part of life in one way or another.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Thinking #Wind #Tree

He who desires nothing, hopes for nothing, and is afraid of nothing, cannot be an artist.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Funny #Sarcastic #Artist

Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?
-- Anton Chekhov

#Beautiful #Believe #Order

People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Happiness #Happy #Summer

If you look at anything long enough, say just that wall in front of you - it will come out of that wall.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Wall #Writing #Long

A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Cosmetics #Dealer #Entertainers

The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Powerful #Philosophy #Grief

A fiance is neither this nor that: he's left one shore, but not yet reached the other.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Umpires #Engagement #Shore

There is nothing new in art except talent.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Art #Genius #Literature

The more refined one is, the more unhappy.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Happiness #Knowledge #Inner Peace

The University brings out all abilities, including incapability.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Literature #Incapability #Ability

No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand... Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Fake People #Psychology #Doe

Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Aptitude #Facts #Spirit

All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart stands still.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Heart #Thinking #Scary

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

#Mistake #Imagine #Virtue

When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can't be cured.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Pain #Mean #Modern Life

A good upbringing means not that you won't spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won't notice it when someone else does.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Mean #Doe #Literature

To a chemist, nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist; he must abandon the subjective line; he must know that dungheaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Passion #Writing #Play

Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Hero #Mind #Action

Art, especially the stage, is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling. There are in store for you many unsuccessful days and whole unsuccessful seasons: there will be great misunderstandings and deep disappointments… you must be prepared for all this, expect it and nevertheless, stubbornly, fanatically follow your own way.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Art #Disappointment #Acting

The teacher must be an actor, an artist,passionately in love with his work.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Teacher #Artist #Actors

Your talent sets you apart: if you were a toad or a tarantula, even then, people would respect you, for to talent all things are forgiven.
-- Anton Chekhov

#People #Toads #Tarantulas

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

#Integrity #Heart #Laughing

My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and absolute freedom--freedom from violence and falsehood, no matter how the last two manifest themselves.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Inspiration #Two #Body

To harbor spiteful feelings against ordinary people for not being heroes is possible only for narrow-minded or embittered man.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Hero #Men #People

Only one who loves can remember so well.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Remember #Wells

And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Firsts #Gray #First Time

Try to be original in your play and as clever as possible; but don't be afraid to show yourself foolish; we must have freedom of thinking, and only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Clever #Writing #Thinking

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

#Years #Justice #Welcome

If I had listened to the critics I'd have died drunk in the gutter
-- Anton Chekhov

#Inspirational #Drunk #Gutters

There are still many more days of failure ahead, whole seasons of failure, things will go terribly wrong, you will have huge disappointments , but you have to prepare for that, you have to expect it and be resolute and follow your own path.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Disappointment #Path #Stills

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

#Beautiful #Self #People

One usually dislikes a play while writing it, but afterward it grows on one. Let others judge and make decisions,
-- Anton Chekhov

#Writing #Play #Judging

Advertising is the very essence of democracy.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Essence #Democracy #Transcendentalism

They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Wise #Men #Soul

In all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Spirit #Remains #Universe

He is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Writing #Foolish #Not Afraid

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Tired #Science #Night

When asked, "Why do you always wear black?", he said, "I am mourning for my life.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Mourning #Black #Said

...and with a burning pain in my heart I realized how unnecessary, how petty, and how deceptive all that had hindered us from loving was. I understood that when you love you must either, in your reasonings about that love, start from what is highest, from what is more important than happiness or unhappiness, sin or virtue in their accepted meaning, or you must not reason at all.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Pain #Love You #Heart

You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Trust #Believe #People

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Inspirational #Moon #Glasses

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Lying #Writing #Stories

Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Men #Land #Rivers

Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Funny #Doctors #Law

Formerly, when I would feel a desire to understand someone, or myself, I would take into consideration not actions, in which everything is relative, but wishes. Tell me what you want and I'll tell you who you are.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Wish #Desire #Want

A litterateur is not a confectioner, not a dealer in cosmetics, not an entertainer. . . . He is just like an ordinary reporter. What would you say if a newspaper reporter, because of his fastidiousness or from a wish to give pleasure to his readers, were to describe only honest mayors, high-minded ladies, and virtuous railroad contractors.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Honesty #Giving #Wish

In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you'll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Dog #Stars #Eye

One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Mean #Promise #Rifles

Everything I have written up to now is trifling compared to that which I would like to write and would write with great pleasureEither I am a fool and a self-conceited person, or I am a being capable of becoming a good writer; I am displeased and bored with everything now being written, while everything in my head interests, moves, and excites me-whence I draw the conclusion that no one is doing what is needed, and I alone know the secret of how it should be done. In all likelihood everyone who writes thinks that. In fact, the devil himself will be brought to his knees by these questions.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Moving #Writing #Conceited

There isn't a Monday that would not cede its place to Tuesday.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Monday #Tuesday

Despite your best efforts, you could not invent a better police force for literature than criticism and the author's own conscience.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Effort #Police #Criticism

One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Thinking #Rifles #Stage

Let the things that happen on the stage be just as complex and yet just as simple as they are in life. For instance, people are having a meal, just having a meal, but at the same time their happiness is being created, or their lives are being smashed up.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Simple #People #Meals

I am writing a play which I probably will not finish until the end of November. I am writing it with considerable pleasure, though I sin frightfully against the conventions of the stage. It is a comedy with three female parts, six male, four acts, a landscape (view of the lake), lots of talk on literature, little action and tons of love.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Love #Writing #Play

I still lack a political, religious and philosophical world view - I change it every month - and so I'll have to limit myself to descriptions of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how they speak.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Love #Religious #Philosophical

Anyone who says the artist's field is all answers and no questions has never done any writing or had any dealings with imageryYou are confusing two concepts: answering the questions and formulating them correctly. Only the latter is required of an author.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Writing #Artist #Two

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth of a moonlit night if you'll write that a gleam like starlight shone from the pieces of a broken bottle, and then the dark, plump shadow of a dog or wolf appeared. You will bring life to nature only if you don't shrink from similes that liken its activities to those of humankind.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Dog #Writing #Eye

Dear sweet unforgettable childhood.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Sweet #Children #Childhood

It always seems to the brothers and the father that their brother or son didn't marry the right person.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Sister #Brother #Father

Flies purify the air, and plays - the morals.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Play #Air #Moral

When a person hasn't in him that which is higher and stronger than all external influences, it is enough for him to catch a good cold in order to lose his equilibrium and begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a dog's bark in every sound.
-- Anton Chekhov

#Dog #Order #Bird