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To a chemist, nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist he must abandon the subjective line he must know that dungheaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.

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
Part
Objectives
Unclean
Earth
Landscape
Chemist
Nothing
Line
Respectable
Play
Ones
Subjective
Must
Writer
Objective
Writing
Lines
Inherent
Good
Passion
Passions
Life
Evil
Abandon

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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Only entropy comes easy.
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The people I am afraid of are the ones who look for tendentiousness between the lines and are determined to see me as either liberal or conservative. I am neither liberal, nor conservative, nor gradualist, nor monk, nor indifferentist. I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one.
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Instructing in cures, therapists always recommend that each case be individualized. If this advice is followed, one becomes persuaded that those means recommended in textbooks as the best, means perfectly appropriate for the template case, turn out to be completely unsuitable in individual cases.
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To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards.
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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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Do you know, Ivan Bunin recalls Anton Chekhov saying to him in 1899, near the end of his too-short life, for how many years I shall be read? Seven. Why seven? Bunin asked. Well, Chekhov answered, seven and a half then.
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Dear, sweet, unforgettable childhood! Why does this irrevocable time, forever departed, seem brighter, more festive and richer than it actually was?
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Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given.
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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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If our life has a meaning, an aim, it has nothing to do with our personal happiness, but something wiser and greater.
Anton Chekhov
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The critics suppose that it is easy to write a play. They aren't aware that writing a good play is difficult and writing a bad one is twice as hard.
Anton Chekhov
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Not everyone knows how to be silent or to leave in good time. It happens that even people of good breeding fail to notice that their presence provokes in the weary or preoccupied host a feeling akin to hatred, and that this feeling is tensely concealed and covered up with lies.
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In short stories it is better to say not enough than to say too much, because, because--I don't know why.
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My holy of holies is the human body.
Anton Chekhov
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That can not possibly be, because it could never possibly be.
Anton Chekhov
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If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.
Anton Chekhov
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How unbearable at times are people who are happy, people for whom everything works out.
Anton Chekhov
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And what does it mean -- dying? Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and only the five we know are lost at death, while the other ninety-five remain alive.
Anton Chekhov
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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.
Anton Chekhov
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The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.
Anton Chekhov