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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.

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
Personal
Greater
Purpose
Happiness
Nothing
Something
Wiser
Life
Aim
Meaning

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.
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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.
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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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What's the use of talking? You can see for yourself that this is a barbarous country the people have no morals and the boredom!
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It's even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday.
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We live not in order to eat, but in order not to know what we feel like eating.
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.
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Children are holy and pure. Even those of bandits and crocodiles belong among the angels.... They must not be turned into a plaything of one's mood, first to be tenderly kissed, then rabidly stomped at.
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Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.
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I am not a liberal, not a conservative, not a believer in gradual progress, not a monk. I should like to be a free artist and nothing more.
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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That can not possibly be, because it could never possibly be.
Anton Chekhov
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Probably nature itself gave man the ability to lie so that in difficult and tense moments he could protect his nest, just as do the vixen and wild duck.
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I confess I seldom commune with my conscience when I write.
Anton Chekhov
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The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on science and art are as well.
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.
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Let the things that happen on the stage be just as complex and yet just as simple as they are in life. For instance, people are having a meal, just having a meal, but at the same time their happiness is being created, or their lives are being smashed up.
Anton Chekhov
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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.
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.
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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.
Anton Chekhov