Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. These Anton Chekhov quotes will motivate you.
Best Anton Chekhov Quotes
- “Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “Do silly things. Foolishness is a great deal more vital and healthy than our straining and striving after a meaningful life.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “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
- “Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “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
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“Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “Any idiot can face a crisis – it’s day-to-day living that wears you out.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “When a person is born, he can embark on only one of three roads of life: if you go right, the wolves will eat you; if you go left, you’ll eat the wolves; if you go straight, you’ll eat yourself.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “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
- “What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.” ~ Anton Chekhov
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“If you want to work on your art, work on your life.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “If I wanted to order a ring for myself, the inscription I should choose would be: “Nothing passes away.” I believe that nothing passes away without leaving a trace, and that every step we take, however small, has significance for our present and our future existence.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “I have the feeling that I’ve seen everything, but failed to notice the elephants.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “People’s destinies are so different. Some people drag along, unnoticed and boring—they’re all alike, and they’re all unhappy. Then there are others, like for instance you—you’re one in a million. You’re happy—” ~ Anton Chekhov
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“Life is given only once, and one wants to live it boldly, with full conscious and beauty.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “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
- “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
- “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
- “If our life has a meaning, an aim, it has nothing to do with our personal happiness, but something wiser and greater.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “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
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“If I had listened to the critics I’d have died drunk in the gutter” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “It’s easier to ask for money from the poor than from the wealthy.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “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
- “Wisdom…. comes not from age, but from education and learning.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “Try to reason about love, and you will lose your reason.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense. Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything. The stupider they are, the wider they conceive their horizons to be. And if an artist decides to declare that he understands nothing of what he sees – this in itself constitutes a considerable clarity in the realm of thought, and a great step forward.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “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
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“You will not become a saint through other people’s sins.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “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
- “Everything should be first-rate in a person, his face, clothes, soul, and thoughts.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “All saints have past and all sinners have a future.” ~ Anton Chekhov
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“The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “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 Quotes
- “[Six principles that make for a good story:] 1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality: flee the stereotype; 6. compassion.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “My love is like a stone tied round my neck; it’s dragging me down to the bottom, but I love my stone. I can’t live without it.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.” ~ Anton Chekhov
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“Nothing can be accomplished by logic and ethics.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “A man and a woman marry because both of them do not know what to do with themselves.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “I expect I shall be a student to the end of my days.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “A woman can become a man’s friend only in the following stages – first an acquaintance, next a mistress, and only then a friend.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “If in the first act you introduce a gun, by the third act you have to use it.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “An actress without talent, forty years old, ate a partridge for dinner, and I felt sorry for the partridge, for it occurred to me that in its life it had been more talented, more sensible, and more honest than the actress.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “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
- “I think human beings must have faith or must look for faith, otherwise our life is empty, empty. To live and not to know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why there are stars in the sky. You must know why you are alive, or else everything is nonsense, just blowing in the wind.” ~ Anton Chekhov
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“The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “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
- “Life on earth is inconceivable without trees.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “It’s not a matter of old or new forms; a person writes without thinking about any forms, he writes because it flows freely from his soul.” ~ Anton Chekhov Quotes
- “When a person expends the least amount of motion on one action, that is grace.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “You ask me what life is. That’s like asking what a carrot is. A carrot is a carrot, and there’s nothing more to know.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “Common hypocrites pass themselves off as doves; political and literary hypocrites pose as eagles. But don’t be fooled by their eagle-like appearance. These are not eagles, but rats or dogs.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “Man will become better when you show him what he is like.” ~ Anton Chekhov
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“Only entropy comes easy.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “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
- “In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations! Be sure not to discuss your hero’s state of mind. Make it clear from his actions. Nor is it necessary to portray many main characters. Let two people be the center of gravity in your story: he and she.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “Better to perish from fools than to accept praises from them.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “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
- “The snow has not yet left the earth but spring is already asking to enter your heart.” ~ Anton Chekhov
- “Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.” ~ Anton Chekhov
