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

Anton Chekhov

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Anton Chekhov
Age: 44 †
Born: 1860
Born: January 1
Died: 1904
Died: January 1
Author
Dramaturge
Journalist
Novelist
Physician
Playwright
Prosaist
Satirist
Writer
Tahanroh
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Antón Pávlovič Čéhov
Antón Pávlovich Chékhov
Chekhov
Profession
Medicine
Tired
Spend
Wife
Literature
Lawful
Science
Mistress
Night
Medical

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Not everyone knows how to be silent or to leave in good time. It happens that even people of good breeding fail to notice that their presence provokes in the weary or preoccupied host a feeling akin to hatred, and that this feeling is tensely concealed and covered up with lies.
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It's easier to ask for money from the poor than from the wealthy.
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The happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burden in silence. Without this silence, happiness would be impossible.
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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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Sports are positively essential. It is healthy to engage in sports, they are beautiful and liberal, liberal in the sense that nothing serves quite as well to integrate social classes, etc., than street or public games.
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I confess I seldom commune with my conscience when I write.
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Oh, dreams! In one night, lying with one's eyes shut, one may sometimes live through more than ten years of happiness.
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I divide all literary works into two categories: Those I like and those I don't like. No other criterion exists for me.
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Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.
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There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined.
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I've been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and can't remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good advice. The only reviewer who ever made an impression on me was Skabichevsky, who prophesied that I would die drunk in the bottom of a ditch.
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Revolting means for good ends make the ends of themselves revolting.
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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.
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The secret of boring people lies in telling them everything.
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In short stories it is better to say not enough than to say too much, because, because--I don't know why.
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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.
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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.
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The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.
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Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress.
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If you can't distinguish people from lap-dogs, you shouldn't undertake philanthropic work.
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