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I've been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and can't remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good advice. The only reviewer who ever made an impression on me was Skabichevsky, who prophesied that I would die drunk in the bottom of a ditch.

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
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More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.
Anton Chekhov
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[Ognev] recalled endless, heated, purely Russian arguments, when the wranglers, spraying spittle and banging their fists on the table, fail to understand yet interrupt one another, themselves not even noticing it, contradict themselves with every phrase, change the subject, then, having argued for two or three hours, begin to laugh.
Anton Chekhov
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It's immoral to steal, but you can take things.
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I don't like being successful the subjects which sit in my head are annoyed and jealous of what has already been written.
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Everything is good in due measure and strong sensations know not measure.
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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.
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I kept thinking how marvellous it would be if I could somehow tear my heart, which felt so heavy, out of my chest.
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And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.
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The snow has not yet left the earth but spring is already asking to enter your heart.
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It is as acceptable now to love the wives of others as it is to smoke their cigars and read their books.
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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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Each of us is full of too many wheels, screws and valves to permit us to judge one another on a first impression or by two or three external signs.
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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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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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Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.
Anton Chekhov
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..when one has no real life, one lives by mirages. It's still better than nothing.
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When asked, Why do you always wear black?, he said, I am mourning for my life.
Anton Chekhov
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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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I still lack a political, religious and philosophical world view - I change it every month - and so I'll have to limit myself to descriptions of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how they speak.
Anton Chekhov
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One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep.
Anton Chekhov