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I divide all literary works into two categories: Those I like and those I don't like. No other criterion exists for me.

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
Two
Criterion
Like
Criteria
Divide
Divides
Categories
Literary
Exists
Works

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.
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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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One had better not rush, otherwise dung comes out rather than creative work.
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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.
Anton Chekhov
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There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table what is national is no longer science.
Anton Chekhov
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Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.
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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
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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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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.
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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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Dear, sweet, unforgettable childhood! Why does this irrevocable time, forever departed, seem brighter, more festive and richer than it actually was?
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When a person hasn't in him that which is higher and stronger than all external influences, it is enough for him to catch a good cold in order to lose his equilibrium and begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a dog's bark in every sound.
Anton Chekhov
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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.
Anton Chekhov
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The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.
Anton Chekhov
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There are in life conjunctions of circumstances when the reproach that we are not Voltaires is least of all appropriate.
Anton Chekhov
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That can not possibly be, because it could never possibly be.
Anton Chekhov
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Desription should be very brief and have an incidental nature.
Anton Chekhov
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At the door of every happy person there should be a man with a hammer whose knock would serve as a constant reminder of the existence of unfortunate people.
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The wealthy man is not he who has money, but he who has the means to live in the luxurious state of early spring.
Anton Chekhov
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To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards.
Anton Chekhov