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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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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
Conservative
Progress
Freedom
Free
Artist
Gradual
Nothing
Monk
Like
Liberal
Believer

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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Everyone judges plays as if they were very easy to write. They don't know that it is hard to write a good play, and twice as hardand tortuous to write a bad one.
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How unbearable at times are people who are happy, people for whom everything works out.
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You will not become a saint through other people's sins.
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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.
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When a woman isn't beautiful, people always say, 'You have lovely eyes, you have lovely hair.'
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Man is what he believes.
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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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Every coming year is as bad as the previous one, the only difference being that in most cases it is even worse.
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Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf.
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In nature a repulsive caterpillar turns into a lovely butterfly. But with human beings it is the other way round: a lovely butterfly turns into a repulsive caterpillar.
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In a century or two, or in a millennium, people will live in a new way, a happier way. We wont be there to see it - but its why we live, why we work. Its why we suffer. Were creating it. Thats the purpose of our existence. The only happiness we can know is to work toward that goal.
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It is the writer's business not to accuse and not to prosecute, but to champion the guilty, once they are condemned and suffer punishment.
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It is a bad thing if a writer tackles a subject he does not understand.
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The people I am afraid of are the ones who look for tendentiousness between the lines and are determined to see me as either liberal or conservative. I am neither liberal, nor conservative, nor gradualist, nor monk, nor indifferentist. I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one.
Anton Chekhov
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A woman is fascinated not by art but by the noise made by those in the field.
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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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Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.
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Death can only be profitable: there's no need to eat, drink, pay taxes, offend people, and since a person lies in a grave for hundreds or thousands of years, if you count it up the profit turns out to be enormous.
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Moscow is a city that has much suffering ahead of it.
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People's destinies are so different. Some people drag along, unnoticed and boring—they're all alike, and they're all unhappy. Then there are others, like for instance you—you're one in a million. You're happy—
Anton Chekhov