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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
Science
Mistress
Night
Medical
Profession
Medicine
Tired
Spend
Wife
Literature
Lawful

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Humankind has understood history as a series of battles because, to this day, it regards conflict as the central facet of life.
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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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Women can't forgive failure.
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There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined.
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A good person will feel guilty even before a dog.
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If you can't distinguish people from lap-dogs, you shouldn't undertake philanthropic work.
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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.
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You will not become a saint through other people's sins.
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Silence accompanies the most significant expressions of happiness and unhappiness: those in love understand one another best when silent, while the most heated and impassioned speech at a graveside touches only outsiders, but seems cold and inconsequential to the widow and children of the deceased.
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[Ognev] recalled endless, heated, purely Russian arguments, when the wranglers, spraying spittle and banging their fists on the table, fail to understand yet interrupt one another, themselves not even noticing it, contradict themselves with every phrase, change the subject, then, having argued for two or three hours, begin to laugh.
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Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.
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If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.
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In all my life I never met anyone so frivolous as you two, so crazy and unbusinesslike. I tell you in plain Russian your property is going to be sold and you don't seem to understand what I say.
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Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.
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A man can deceive his fiancee or his mistress as much as he likes and, in the eyes of a woman he loves, an ass may pass for a philosopher. But a daughter is a different matter.
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The people I am afraid of are the ones who look for tendentiousness between the lines and are determined to see me as either liberal or conservative. I am neither liberal, nor conservative, nor gradualist, nor monk, nor indifferentist. I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one.
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Revolting means for good ends make the ends of themselves revolting.
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I don't like being successful the subjects which sit in my head are annoyed and jealous of what has already been written.
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If many remedies are prescribed for an illness you can be sure it has no cure
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God's world is a good place. The one thing not good in it is we. How little justice and humility there is in us. How little we understand true patriotism!
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