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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
Lying
Truth
Real
Virulent
Gracious
Sweet

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He who doesn't know how to be a servant should never be allowed to be a master the interests of public life are alien to anyone who is unable to enjoy others' successes, and such a person should never be entrusted with public affairs.
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A man wants nothing so badly as a gooseberry farm.
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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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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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The sea has neither meaning nor pity.
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Brevity - the sister of talent.
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Not everyone knows how to be silent or to leave in good time. It happens that even people of good breeding fail to notice that their presence provokes in the weary or preoccupied host a feeling akin to hatred, and that this feeling is tensely concealed and covered up with lies.
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If you can't distinguish people from lap-dogs, you shouldn't undertake philanthropic work.
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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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Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.
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The wealthy man is not he who has money, but he who has the means to live in the luxurious state of early spring.
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Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress.
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..when one has no real life, one lives by mirages. It's still better than nothing.
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There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table what is national is no longer science.
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A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages - first an acquantaince, next a mistress, and only then a friend.
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If our life has a meaning, an aim, it has nothing to do with our personal happiness, but something wiser and greater.
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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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The bourgeoisie is very fond of so-called practical types and novels with happy endings, since they soothe it with the idea that one can both accumulate capital and preserve innocence, be a beast and at the same time be happy...
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Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it—just as though one were in a madhouse or prison.
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There is nothing new in art except talent.
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