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

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
Real
Virulent
Gracious
Sweet
Lying
Truth

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Calculating selfishness is the annihilation of self.
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I confess I seldom commune with my conscience when I write.
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Instructing in cures, therapists always recommend that each case be individualized. If this advice is followed, one becomes persuaded that those means recommended in textbooks as the best, means perfectly appropriate for the template case, turn out to be completely unsuitable in individual cases.
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It's even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday.
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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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[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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A man and a woman marry because both of them do not know what to do with themselves.
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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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You've only got to begin to do anything to find out how few honest, honourable people there are. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think: Oh Lord, you've given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants.
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This life of ours...human life is like a flower gloriously blooming in a meadow: along comes a goat, eats it up---no more flower.
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Whoever sincerely believes that elevated and distant goals are as little use to man as a cow, that all of our problems come fromsuch goals, is left to eat, drink, sleep, or, when he gets sick of that, to run up to a chest and smash his forehead on its corner.
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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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I'm in mourning for my life.
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I have no will of my own. Never did. Limp and lily-livered, I always obey - is it possible that's attractive to women?
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Children are holy and pure. Even those of bandits and crocodiles belong among the angels.... They must not be turned into a plaything of one's mood, first to be tenderly kissed, then rabidly stomped at.
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Once a man gets a fixed idea, there's nothing to be done.
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Revolting means for good ends make the ends of themselves revolting.
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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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Death is terrifying, but it would be even more terrifying to find out that you are going to live forever and never die.
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The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.
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