Quote

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
Life
Like
Carrot
Carrots
Asking
Asks
Nothing

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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Every person lives his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy.
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In all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.
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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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The more cultured a man, the less fortunate he is.
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Then I feel so happy and at the same time so sad, it's unimaginable.
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Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions.
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People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about.
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Revolting means for good ends make the ends of themselves revolting.
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What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.
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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.
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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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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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Oh, dreams! In one night, lying with one's eyes shut, one may sometimes live through more than ten years of happiness.
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In two or three hundred years life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful, astounding. Man needs such a life and if it hasn't yetappeared, he should begin to anticipate it, wait for it, dream about it, prepare for it. To achieve this, he has to see and know more than did his grandfather and father.
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[Six principles that make for a good story:] 1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature 2. total objectivity 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects 4. extreme brevity 5. audacity and originality: flee the stereotype 6. compassion.
Anton Chekhov
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God's world is a good place. The one thing not good in it is we. How little justice and humility there is in us. How little we understand true patriotism!
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To believe in God is not hard. Inquisitors, Byron and Arakcheev believed in Him. No, believe in man!
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I've been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and can't remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good advice. The only reviewer who ever made an impression on me was Skabichevsky, who prophesied that I would die drunk in the bottom of a ditch.
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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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It seems to me that all of the evil in life comes from idleness, boredom, and psychic emptiness, but all of that is inevitable when you become accustomed to living at others' expense.
Anton Chekhov