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
Firsts
First
Pistol
Writing
Pistols
Fired
Hung
Otherwise
Following
Wall

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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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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There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined.
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The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.
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In descriptions of nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture.
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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.
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When asked, Why do you always wear black?, he said, I am mourning for my life.
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Brevity - the sister of talent.
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An expansive life, one not constrained by four walls, requires as well an expansive pocket.
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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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There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table what is national is no longer science.
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Write about this man who, drop by drop, squeezes the slave's blood out of himself until he wakes one day to find the blood of a real human being--not a slave's--coursing through his veins.
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What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won't seem important at all.
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I was oppressed with a sense of vague discontent and dissatisfaction with my own life, which was passing so quickly and uninterestingly, and I kept thinking it would be a good thing if I could tear my heart out of my breast, that heart which had grown so weary of life.
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I confess I seldom commune with my conscience when I write.
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Sports are positively essential. It is healthy to engage in sports, they are beautiful and liberal, liberal in the sense that nothing serves quite as well to integrate social classes, etc., than street or public games.
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I can't accept our nervous age, since mankind has been nervous during every age. Whoever fears nervousness should turn into a sturgeon or smelt if a sturgeon makes a stupid mistake, it can only be one: to end up on a hook, and then in a pan in a pastry shell.
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Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.
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Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.
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Humankind has understood history as a series of battles because, to this day, it regards conflict as the central facet of life.
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There is nothing new in art except talent.
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