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Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.

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
Doe
Life
Pleasurable
Idleness
Useless
Agree
Philosophy
Literature
Happiness

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If you cry 'forward', you must without fail make plain in what direction to go.
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Life is given only once, and one wants to live it boldly, with full conscious and beauty.
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To harbor spiteful feelings against ordinary people for not being heroes is possible only for narrow-minded or embittered man.
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I am not a liberal, not a conservative, not a believer in gradual progress, not a monk. I should like to be a free artist and nothing more.
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I long to embrace, to include in my own short life, all that is accessible to man. I long to speak, to read, to wield a hammer in a great factory, to keep watch at sea, to plow. I want to be walking along the Nevsky Prospect, or in the open fields, or on the ocean - wherever my imagination ranges.
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It is as acceptable now to love the wives of others as it is to smoke their cigars and read their books.
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I swear fearfully at the conventions of the stage.
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The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on science and art are as well.
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It seems to me that all of the evil in life comes from idleness, boredom, and psychic emptiness, but all of that is inevitable when you become accustomed to living at others' expense.
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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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For the salvation of his soul the Muslim digs a well. It would be a fine thing if each of us were to leave behind a school, or a well, or something of the sort, so that life would not pass by and retreat into eternity without a trace.
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What's the use of talking? You can see for yourself that this is a barbarous country the people have no morals and the boredom!
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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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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.
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[In] death at least there would be one profit it would no longer be necessary to eat, to drink, to pay taxes, or to [offend] others and as a man lies in his grave not one year, but hundreds and thousands of years, the profit was enormous. The life of man was, in short, a loss, and only his death a profit.
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The time's come: there's a terrific thunder-cloud advancing upon us, a mighty storm is coming to freshen us up....It's going to blow away all this idleness and indifference, and prejudice against work....I'm going to work, and in twenty-five or thirty years' time every man and woman will be working.
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There is nothing new in art except talent.
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Nothing can be accomplished by logic and ethics.
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Fine. Since the tea is not forthcoming, let's have a philosophical conversation.
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Calculating selfishness is the annihilation of self.
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