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

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
Answers
Asks
Artist
Art
Questions
Role
Answer
Roles

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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It is easier to ask of the poor than of the rich.
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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—
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I kept thinking how marvellous it would be if I could somehow tear my heart, which felt so heavy, out of my chest.
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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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Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.
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I observed that after marriage people cease to be curious.
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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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To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards.
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Here I am with you & yet not for a single moment do I forget that there's an unfinished novel waiting for me.
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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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Nothing better forges a bond of love, friendship or respect than common hatred toward something.
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From here, far away, people seem very good, and that is natural, for in going away into the country we are not hiding from people but from our vanity, which in town among people is unjust and active beyond measure.
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It is easy to be a philosopher in academia, but it is very difficult to be a philosopher in life.
Anton Chekhov
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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.
Anton Chekhov
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My holy of holies is the human body.
Anton Chekhov
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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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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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Everyone judges plays as if they were very easy to write. They don't know that it is hard to write a good play, and twice as hardand tortuous to write a bad one.
Anton Chekhov
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When performing an autopsy, even the most inveterate spiritualist would have to question where the soul is.
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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.
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