Quote

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

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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
Problem
Confuse
Take
Solving
Right
Demanding
Different
Intelligent
Work
Demand
Things
Attitude
Stating
Artist
Posing
Two
Correctly

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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Man is what he believes.
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Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given.
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Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.
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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.
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The problem is that we attempt to solve the simplest questions cleverly, thereby rendering them unusually complex. One should seekthe simple solution.
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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.
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It is a bad thing if a writer tackles a subject he does not understand.
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Write, write, write-till your fingers break.
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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.
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I myself smoke, but my wife asked me to speak today on the harmfulness of tobacco, so what can I do? If it's tobacco, then let it be tobacco.
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If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.
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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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Better to perish from fools than to accept praises from them.
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It's worth living abroad to study up on genteel and delicate manners. The maid smiles continuously she smiles like a duchess on a stage, while at the same time it is clear from her face that she is exhausted from overwork.
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[In] death at least there would be one profit it would no longer be necessary to eat, to drink, to pay taxes, or to [offend] others and as a man lies in his grave not one year, but hundreds and thousands of years, the profit was enormous. The life of man was, in short, a loss, and only his death a profit.
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I have no will of my own. Never did. Limp and lily-livered, I always obey - is it possible that's attractive to women?
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When asked, Why do you always wear black?, he said, I am mourning for my life.
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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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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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In descriptions of nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture.
Anton Chekhov