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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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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
Artist
Given
Else
Nothing
Would
Like
Regret
Strength
Free
More quotes by Anton Chekhov
The desire to serve the common good must without fail be a requisite of the soul, a necessity for personal happiness if it issuesnot from there, but from theoretical or other considerations, it is not at all the same thing.
Anton Chekhov
I let myself go at the beginning and write with an easy mind, but by the time I get to the middle I begin to grow timid and to fear my story will be too long. . .That is why the beginning of my stories is always very promising and looks as though I were starting on a novel, and the middle is huddled and timid, and the end is...like fireworks.
Anton Chekhov
If you want to work on your art, work on your life.
Anton Chekhov
You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly.
Anton Chekhov
Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress.
Anton Chekhov
I long to embrace, to include in my own short life, all that is accessible to man. I long to speak, to read, to wield a hammer in a great factory, to keep watch at sea, to plow. I want to be walking along the Nevsky Prospect, or in the open fields, or on the ocean - wherever my imagination ranges.
Anton Chekhov
Not everyone knows how to be silent or to leave in good time. It happens that even people of good breeding fail to notice that their presence provokes in the weary or preoccupied host a feeling akin to hatred, and that this feeling is tensely concealed and covered up with lies.
Anton Chekhov
You ask me what life is. That's like asking what a carrot is. A carrot is a carrot, and there's nothing more to know.
Anton Chekhov
A woman is fascinated not by art but by the noise made by those in the field.
Anton Chekhov
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.
Anton Chekhov
[Six principles that make for a good story:] 1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature 2. total objectivity 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects 4. extreme brevity 5. audacity and originality: flee the stereotype 6. compassion.
Anton Chekhov
The unhappy are egoistic, spiteful, unjust, cruel, and less capable of understanding each other than fools. Unhappiness does not bring people together but draws them apart, and even where one would fancy people should be united by the similarity of their sorrow, far more injustice and cruelty is generated than in comparatively placid surroundings.
Anton Chekhov
He who desires nothing, hopes for nothing, and is afraid of nothing, cannot be an artist.
Anton Chekhov
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
Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.
Anton Chekhov
The sea has neither meaning nor pity.
Anton Chekhov
Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf.
Anton Chekhov
I swear fearfully at the conventions of the stage.
Anton Chekhov
Instructing in cures, therapists always recommend that each case be individualized. If this advice is followed, one becomes persuaded that those means recommended in textbooks as the best, means perfectly appropriate for the template case, turn out to be completely unsuitable in individual cases.
Anton Chekhov
All the great sages are as despotic as generals, and as ignorant and as indelicate as generals, because they feel secure of impunity.
Anton Chekhov