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Write only of what is important and eternal.

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
Writing
Eternal
Write
Important

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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Write, write, write-till your fingers break.
Anton Chekhov
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Faith is a capacity of the spirit. It is like talent: you have to be born with it
Anton Chekhov
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This life of ours...human life is like a flower gloriously blooming in a meadow: along comes a goat, eats it up---no more flower.
Anton Chekhov
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In all my life I never met anyone so frivolous as you two, so crazy and unbusinesslike. I tell you in plain Russian your property is going to be sold and you don't seem to understand what I say.
Anton Chekhov
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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.
Anton Chekhov
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Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.
Anton Chekhov
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When a man fails to understand something he is conscious of a discord, and seeks for the cause of it not in himself, as he should, but outside himself - hence the war with what he does not understand.
Anton Chekhov
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Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.
Anton Chekhov
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These people have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and wild herbs.
Anton Chekhov
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For the salvation of his soul the Muslim digs a well. It would be a fine thing if each of us were to leave behind a school, or a well, or something of the sort, so that life would not pass by and retreat into eternity without a trace.
Anton Chekhov
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..when one has no real life, one lives by mirages. It's still better than nothing.
Anton Chekhov
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The time's come: there's a terrific thunder-cloud advancing upon us, a mighty storm is coming to freshen us up....It's going to blow away all this idleness and indifference, and prejudice against work....I'm going to work, and in twenty-five or thirty years' time every man and woman will be working.
Anton Chekhov
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I expect I shall be a student to the end of my days.
Anton Chekhov
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[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
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But if you had asked him what his work was, he would look candidly and openly at you with his large bright eyes through his gold pincenez, and would answer in a soft, velvety, lisping baritone: My work is literature.
Anton Chekhov
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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
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It's been a long time since I've had champagne.
Anton Chekhov
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You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly.
Anton Chekhov
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It is a bad thing if a writer tackles a subject he does not understand.
Anton Chekhov
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Every coming year is as bad as the previous one, the only difference being that in most cases it is even worse.
Anton Chekhov