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

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We live not in order to eat, but in order not to know what we feel like eating.
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Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.
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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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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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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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When a woman isn't beautiful, people always say, 'You have lovely eyes, you have lovely hair.'
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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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[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.
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And it is the way with us that you may express disapproval of the sun or the moon, or anything you like, but God preserve you from touching the Liberals! Heaven forbid!
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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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Tsars and slaves, the intelligent and the obtuse, publicans and pharisees all have an identical legal and moral right to honor the memory of the deceased as they see fit, without regard for anyone else's opinion and without the fear of hindering one another.
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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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Brevity - the sister of talent.
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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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A fiancé is neither this nor that: he's left one shore, but not yet reached the other.
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Life is difficult for those who have the daring to first set out on an unknown road. The avant-garde always has a bad time of it.
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After us they'll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they'll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the same, a hard life full of secrets, but happy. And a thousand years from now man will still be sighing, Oh! Life is so hard! and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.
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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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Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.
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There isn't a Monday that would not cede its place to Tuesday.
Anton Chekhov