Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Else
Nothing
Would
Like
Regret
Strength
Free
Artist
Given

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

Image
The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can't return even if it wants to.
Anton Chekhov
Image
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.
Anton Chekhov
Image
Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.
Anton Chekhov
Image
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.
Anton Chekhov
Image
Lying is the same as alcoholism. Liars prevaricate even on their deathbeds.
Anton Chekhov
Image
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
Image
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.
Anton Chekhov
Image
It seems to me that all of the evil in life comes from idleness, boredom, and psychic emptiness, but all of that is inevitable when you become accustomed to living at others' expense.
Anton Chekhov
Image
If our life has a meaning, an aim, it has nothing to do with our personal happiness, but something wiser and greater.
Anton Chekhov
Image
Revolting means for good ends make the ends of themselves revolting.
Anton Chekhov
Image
Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.
Anton Chekhov
Image
To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards.
Anton Chekhov
Image
Brevity - the sister of talent.
Anton Chekhov
Image
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
Image
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.
Anton Chekhov
Image
There are no small number of people in this world who, solitary by nature, always try to go back into their shell like a hermit crab or a snail.
Anton Chekhov
Image
Never bring a cannon on stage in Act I unless you intend to fire it by the last act.
Anton Chekhov
Image
To a chemist, nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist he must abandon the subjective line he must know that dungheaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.
Anton Chekhov
Image
And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.
Anton Chekhov
Image
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.
Anton Chekhov