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You ask me what life is. That's like asking what a carrot is. A carrot is a carrot, and there's nothing more to know.
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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Carrot
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Life
More quotes by Anton Chekhov
There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and simplicity in our interactions. Be rude when you're angry, laugh when something is funny, and answer when you're asked.
Anton Chekhov
[In] death at least there would be one profit it would no longer be necessary to eat, to drink, to pay taxes, or to [offend] others and as a man lies in his grave not one year, but hundreds and thousands of years, the profit was enormous. The life of man was, in short, a loss, and only his death a profit.
Anton Chekhov
My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.
Anton Chekhov
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
Man is what he believes.
Anton Chekhov
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
One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that they'll be proving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven.
Anton Chekhov
Everything should be first-rate in a person, his face, clothes, soul and thoughts.
Anton Chekhov
When a person hasn't in him that which is higher and stronger than all external influences, it is enough for him to catch a good cold in order to lose his equilibrium and begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a dog's bark in every sound.
Anton Chekhov
He who doesn't know how to be a servant should never be allowed to be a master the interests of public life are alien to anyone who is unable to enjoy others' successes, and such a person should never be entrusted with public affairs.
Anton Chekhov
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.
Anton Chekhov
It's even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday.
Anton Chekhov
The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.
Anton Chekhov
The secret of boring people lies in telling them everything.
Anton Chekhov
A person loves to talk about his illnesses although that is the least interesting part of his life.
Anton Chekhov
Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.
Anton Chekhov
Oh, dreams! In one night, lying with one's eyes shut, one may sometimes live through more than ten years of happiness.
Anton Chekhov
If I had listened to the critics I'd have died drunk in the gutter
Anton Chekhov
What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.
Anton Chekhov
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.
Anton Chekhov