Quote

Everything on earth is beautiful, everything -- except what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own human dignity.

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
Think
Forget
Thinking
Purpose
Life
Nature
Beautiful
Purposes
Earth
Dignity
Human
Except
Everything
Higher
Humans
Beauty

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Every person lives his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy.
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My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.
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I kept thinking how marvellous it would be if I could somehow tear my heart, which felt so heavy, out of my chest.
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To Moscow, to Moscow, to Moscow!
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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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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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Everything should be first-rate in a person, his face, clothes, soul and thoughts.
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Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.
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In descriptions of nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture.
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After us they'll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they'll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the same, a hard life full of secrets, but happy. And a thousand years from now man will still be sighing, Oh! Life is so hard! and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.
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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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I abide by a rule concerning reviews: I will never ask, neither in writing nor in person, that a word be put in about my book.... One feels cleaner this way. When someone asks that his book be reviewed he risks running up against a vulgarity offensive to authorial sensibilities.
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Even while lying, you'll be believed if you speak with authority.
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We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.
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I was so drunk the whole time that I took bottles for girls and girls for bottles.
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You look boldly ahead isn't it only that you don't see or divine anything terrible in the future because life is still hidden from your young eyes.
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To dine, drink champagne, raise a racket and make speeches about the people's consciousness, the people's conscience, freedom andso forth while servants in tails are scurrying around your table, just like serfs, and out in the severe cold on the street await coachmen--this is the same as lying to the holy spirit.
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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.
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Once you've married, be strict but just with your wife, don't allow her to forget herself, and when a misunderstanding arises, say: Don't forget that I made you happy.
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The problem is that we attempt to solve the simplest questions cleverly, thereby rendering them unusually complex. One should seekthe simple solution.
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