Quote

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

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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
Back
Snail
Trying
Shell
Always
Shells
Like
Solitary
Crab
World
Number
Hermit
People
Numbers
Hermits
Small
Nature
Crabs

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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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Everything on earth is beautiful, everything -- except what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own human dignity.
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In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations! Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions. Nor is it necessary to portray many main characters. Let two people be the center of gravity in your story: he and she.
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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.
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The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.
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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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Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it—just as though one were in a madhouse or prison.
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After us they'll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they'll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the same, a hard life full of secrets, but happy. And a thousand years from now man will still be sighing, Oh! Life is so hard! and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.
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He who desires nothing, hopes for nothing, and is afraid of nothing, cannot be an artist.
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Satiation, like any state of vitality, always contains a degree of impudence, and that impudence emerges first and foremost when the sated man instructs the hungry one.
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If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.
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I was so drunk the whole time that I took bottles for girls and girls for bottles.
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There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined.
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Death is terrifying, but it would be even more terrifying to find out that you are going to live forever and never die.
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A sweet lie is more gracious for us than a virulent but real truth.
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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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My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.
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Silence accompanies the most significant expressions of happiness and unhappiness: those in love understand one another best when silent, while the most heated and impassioned speech at a graveside touches only outsiders, but seems cold and inconsequential to the widow and children of the deceased.
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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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Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.
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