Quote

Watching a woman make Russian pancakes, you might think that she was calling on the spirits or extracting from the batter the philosopher's stone.

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
Woman
Pancakes
Spirit
Spirits
Might
Russian
Make
Stone
Think
Philosopher
Thinking
Stones
Calling
Extracting
Watching
Batter

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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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If you cry 'forward', you must without fail make plain in what direction to go.
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Man will become better when you show him what he is like.
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It is a bad thing if a writer tackles a subject he does not understand.
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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.
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You've only got to begin to do anything to find out how few honest, honourable people there are. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think: Oh Lord, you've given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants.
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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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Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.
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Life is given only once, and one wants to live it boldly, with full conscious and beauty.
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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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I am writing a play which I probably will not finish until the end of November. I am writing it with considerable pleasure, though I sin frightfully against the conventions of the stage. It is a comedy with three female parts, six male, four acts, a landscape (view of the lake), lots of talk on literature, little action and tons of love.
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Life is difficult for those who have the daring to first set out on an unknown road. The avant-garde always has a bad time of it.
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A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages - first an acquantaince, next a mistress, and only then a friend.
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If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It's better to live somehow than not at all.
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Every person lives his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy.
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It always seems to the brothers and the father that their brother or son didn't marry the right person.
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I can't accept our nervous age, since mankind has been nervous during every age. Whoever fears nervousness should turn into a sturgeon or smelt if a sturgeon makes a stupid mistake, it can only be one: to end up on a hook, and then in a pan in a pastry shell.
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