Quote

If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.

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
First
Pistol
Writing
Pistols
Fired
Hung
Otherwise
Following
Wall
Firsts

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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Who keeps the tavern and serves up the drinks? The peasant. Who squanders and drinks up money belonging to the peasant commune, the school, the church? The peasant. Who would steal from his neighbor, commit arson, and falsely denounce another for a bottle of vodka? The peasant.
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He is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.
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Satiation, like any state of vitality, always contains a degree of impudence, and that impudence emerges first and foremost when the sated man instructs the hungry one.
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In a century or two, or in a millennium, people will live in a new way, a happier way. We wont be there to see it - but its why we live, why we work. Its why we suffer. Were creating it. Thats the purpose of our existence. The only happiness we can know is to work toward that goal.
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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Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far asblather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material.
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Just as I shall lie alone in the grave, so, in essence, do I live alone.
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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One usually dislikes a play while writing it, but afterward it grows on one. Let others judge and make decisions.
Anton Chekhov
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A man and a woman marry because both of them do not know what to do with themselves.
Anton Chekhov
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Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.
Anton Chekhov
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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.
Anton Chekhov
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I've noticed that people who get married cease to be curious.
Anton Chekhov
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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.
Anton Chekhov
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In nature a repulsive caterpillar turns into a lovely butterfly. But with human beings it is the other way round: a lovely butterfly turns into a repulsive caterpillar.
Anton Chekhov
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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.
Anton Chekhov
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The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.
Anton Chekhov
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Eyes - the head's chief of police. They watch and make mental notes.
Anton Chekhov
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A man wants nothing so badly as a gooseberry farm.
Anton Chekhov
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Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.
Anton Chekhov