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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
Write
Important
Writing
Eternal

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.
Anton Chekhov
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I myself smoke, but my wife asked me to speak today on the harmfulness of tobacco, so what can I do? If it's tobacco, then let it be tobacco.
Anton Chekhov
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Revolting means for good ends make the ends of themselves revolting.
Anton Chekhov
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Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions.
Anton Chekhov
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Sports are positively essential. It is healthy to engage in sports, they are beautiful and liberal, liberal in the sense that nothing serves quite as well to integrate social classes, etc., than street or public games.
Anton Chekhov
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There are people whom even children's literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon.
Anton Chekhov
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Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.
Anton Chekhov
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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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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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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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Nothing better forges a bond of love, friendship or respect than common hatred toward something.
Anton Chekhov
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we all have too many wheels, screws and valves to judge each other on first impressions or one or two pointers. I don't understand you, you don't understand me and we don't understand ourselves.
Anton Chekhov
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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
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To believe in God is not hard. Inquisitors, Byron and Arakcheev believed in Him. No, believe in man!
Anton Chekhov
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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.
Anton Chekhov
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The critics suppose that it is easy to write a play. They aren't aware that writing a good play is difficult and writing a bad one is twice as hard.
Anton Chekhov
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It's not a matter of old or new forms a person writes without thinking about any forms, he writes because it flows freely from his soul.
Anton Chekhov
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He is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.
Anton Chekhov
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Three o'clock in the morning. The soft April night is looking at my windows and caressingly winking at me with its stars. I can't sleep, I am so happy.
Anton Chekhov
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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.
Anton Chekhov