Quote

One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep.

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
Never
Stage
Wrong
Keep
Place
Rifle
Must
Rifles
Mean
Loaded
Going
Promises
Make
Promise

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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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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Those who come a hundred or two hundred years after us will despise us for having lived our lives so stupidly and tastelessly. Perhaps they'll find a means to be happy.
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My love is like a stone tied round my neck it's dragging me down to the bottom but I love my stone. I can't live without it.
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That can not possibly be, because it could never possibly be.
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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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People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.
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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.
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A good person will feel guilty even before a dog.
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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.
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When you're thirsty and it seems that you could drink the entire ocean that's faith when you start to drink and finish only a glass or two that's science.
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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
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Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.
Anton Chekhov
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Only entropy comes easy.
Anton Chekhov
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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.
Anton Chekhov
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There is nothing new in art except talent.
Anton Chekhov
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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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Man will become better when you show him what he is like.
Anton Chekhov
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Only one who loves can remember so well.
Anton Chekhov
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People's destinies are so different. Some people drag along, unnoticed and boring—they're all alike, and they're all unhappy. Then there are others, like for instance you—you're one in a million. You're happy—
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Death is terrifying, but it would be even more terrifying to find out that you are going to live forever and never die.
Anton Chekhov