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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
Like
Criteria
Divide
Divides
Categories
Literary
Exists
Works
Two
Criterion

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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In all my life I never met anyone so frivolous as you two, so crazy and unbusinesslike. I tell you in plain Russian your property is going to be sold and you don't seem to understand what I say.
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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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In descriptions of nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture.
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The stupider the peasant, the better the horse understands him.
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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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Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.
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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.
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That can not possibly be, because it could never possibly be.
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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.
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If I had listened to the critics I'd have died drunk in the gutter
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Oh, I have now a mania for shortness. Whatever I read - my own or other people's works - it all seems to me not short enough.
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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
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Even while lying, you'll be believed if you speak with authority.
Anton Chekhov
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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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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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A woman is fascinated not by art but by the noise made by those in the field.
Anton Chekhov
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You look boldly ahead isn't it only that you don't see or divine anything terrible in the future because life is still hidden from your young eyes.
Anton Chekhov
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Only one who loves can remember so well.
Anton Chekhov
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What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.
Anton Chekhov
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If you cry ''Forward'' you must be sure to make clear the direction in which to go. Don't you see that if you fail to do that and simply call out the word to a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions?
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