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Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf.

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
Debauched
Canary
Canaries
Pious
Wolf
Better

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A good person will feel guilty even before a dog.
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Write only of what is important and eternal.
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Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far asblather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material.
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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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Once a man gets a fixed idea, there's nothing to be done.
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When asked, Why do you always wear black?, he said, I am mourning for my life.
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There is something beautiful, touching and poetic when one person loves more than the other, and the other is indifferent.
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Every person lives his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy.
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I have no will of my own. Never did. Limp and lily-livered, I always obey - is it possible that's attractive to women?
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When a person is born, he can embark on only one of three roads of life: if you go right, the wolves will eat you if you go left, you’ll eat the wolves if you go straight, you’ll eat yourself.
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I let myself go at the beginning and write with an easy mind, but by the time I get to the middle I begin to grow timid and to fear my story will be too long. . .That is why the beginning of my stories is always very promising and looks as though I were starting on a novel, and the middle is huddled and timid, and the end is...like fireworks.
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Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it—just as though one were in a madhouse or prison.
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The snow has not yet left the earth but spring is already asking to enter your heart.
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You confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for an artist.
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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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It is easy to be a philosopher in academia, but it is very difficult to be a philosopher in life.
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