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He who desires nothing, hopes for nothing, and is afraid of nothing, cannot be an artist.

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
Afraid
Funny
Desire
Artist
Art
Cannot
Sarcastic
Nothing
Hopes
Desires

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we all have too many wheels, screws and valves to judge each other on first impressions or one or two pointers. I don't understand you, you don't understand me and we don't understand ourselves.
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All the great sages are as despotic as generals, and as ignorant and as indelicate as generals, because they feel secure of impunity.
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Your talent sets you apart: if you were a toad or a tarantula, even then, people would respect you, for to talent all things are forgiven.
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When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can't be cured.
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People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.
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Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.
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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.
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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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[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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These people have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and wild herbs.
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Life is given only once, and one wants to live it boldly, with full conscious and beauty.
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A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.
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In Moscow you sit in a huge room at a restaurant you know no one and no one knows you, and at the same time you don't feel a stranger. But here you know everyone and everyone knows you, and yet you are a stranger - a stranger... A stranger, and lonely...
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At the door of every happy person there should be a man with a hammer whose knock would serve as a constant reminder of the existence of unfortunate people.
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Write only of what is important and eternal.
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In order to cultivate yourself and to drop no lower than the level of the milieu in which you have landed, it is not enough to read Pickwick and memorize a monologue from Faust... You need to work continually day and night, to read ceaselessly, to study, to exercise your will... Each hour is precious.
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If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It's better to live somehow than not at all.
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Great Jove angry is no longer Jove.
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When a person hasn't in him that which is higher and stronger than all external influences, it is enough for him to catch a good cold in order to lose his equilibrium and begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a dog's bark in every sound.
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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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