Quote

A sweet lie is more gracious for us than a virulent but real truth.

Anton Chekhov

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Virulent
Gracious
Sweet
Lying
Truth
Real

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

Image
I am writing a play which I probably will not finish until the end of November. I am writing it with considerable pleasure, though I sin frightfully against the conventions of the stage. It is a comedy with three female parts, six male, four acts, a landscape (view of the lake), lots of talk on literature, little action and tons of love.
Anton Chekhov
Image
It is as acceptable now to love the wives of others as it is to smoke their cigars and read their books.
Anton Chekhov
Image
It's even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday.
Anton Chekhov
Image
It's worth living abroad to study up on genteel and delicate manners. The maid smiles continuously she smiles like a duchess on a stage, while at the same time it is clear from her face that she is exhausted from overwork.
Anton Chekhov
Image
The happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burden in silence. Without this silence, happiness would be impossible.
Anton Chekhov
Image
Write about this man who, drop by drop, squeezes the slave's blood out of himself until he wakes one day to find the blood of a real human being--not a slave's--coursing through his veins.
Anton Chekhov
Image
It's easier to ask for money from the poor than from the wealthy.
Anton Chekhov
Image
I was oppressed with a sense of vague discontent and dissatisfaction with my own life, which was passing so quickly and uninterestingly, and I kept thinking it would be a good thing if I could tear my heart out of my breast, that heart which had grown so weary of life.
Anton Chekhov
Image
I swear fearfully at the conventions of the stage.
Anton Chekhov
Image
A man and a woman marry because both of them do not know what to do with themselves.
Anton Chekhov
Image
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.
Anton Chekhov
Image
There are people whom even children's literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon.
Anton Chekhov
Image
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
Image
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.
Anton Chekhov
Image
When asked, Why do you always wear black?, he said, I am mourning for my life.
Anton Chekhov
Image
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
Image
It is a bad thing if a writer tackles a subject he does not understand.
Anton Chekhov
Image
Writers are as jealous as pigeons.
Anton Chekhov
Image
I was so drunk the whole time that I took bottles for girls and girls for bottles.
Anton Chekhov
Image
[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