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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
Gracious
Sweet
Lying
Truth
Real
Virulent

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations! Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions. Nor is it necessary to portray many main characters. Let two people be the center of gravity in your story: he and she.
Anton Chekhov
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You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly.
Anton Chekhov
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The unhappy are egoistic, spiteful, unjust, cruel, and less capable of understanding each other than fools. Unhappiness does not bring people together but draws them apart, and even where one would fancy people should be united by the similarity of their sorrow, far more injustice and cruelty is generated than in comparatively placid surroundings.
Anton Chekhov
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What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.
Anton Chekhov
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What must human beings be, to destroy what they can never create?
Anton Chekhov
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I've never been in love. I've dreamt of it day and night, but my heart is like a fine piano no one can play because the key is lost.
Anton Chekhov
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Even while lying, you'll be believed if you speak with authority.
Anton Chekhov
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In all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.
Anton Chekhov
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Every person lives his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy.
Anton Chekhov
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The snow has not yet left the earth but spring is already asking to enter your heart.
Anton Chekhov
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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.
Anton Chekhov
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Everything should be first-rate in a person, his face, clothes, soul and thoughts.
Anton Chekhov
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I was so drunk the whole time that I took bottles for girls and girls for bottles.
Anton Chekhov
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To a chemist, nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist he must abandon the subjective line he must know that dungheaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.
Anton Chekhov
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There is nothing new in art except talent.
Anton Chekhov
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A good person will feel guilty even before a dog.
Anton Chekhov
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To harbor spiteful feelings against ordinary people for not being heroes is possible only for narrow-minded or embittered man.
Anton Chekhov
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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.
Anton Chekhov
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Desription should be very brief and have an incidental nature.
Anton Chekhov
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I've noticed that people who get married cease to be curious.
Anton Chekhov