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In short stories it is better to say not enough than to say too much, because, because--I don't know why.

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
Short
Stories
Better
Enough
Much

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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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.
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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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A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.
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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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Revolting means for good ends make the ends of themselves revolting.
Anton Chekhov
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I swear fearfully at the conventions of the stage.
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My holy of holies is the human body.
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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.
Anton Chekhov
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People's destinies are so different. Some people drag along, unnoticed and boring—they're all alike, and they're all unhappy. Then there are others, like for instance you—you're one in a million. You're happy—
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Indeed, in Russia there is a terrible poverty of facts, and a terrible abundance of reflections of all sorts.
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I should think I'm going to be a perpetual student.
Anton Chekhov
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Women can't forgive failure.
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Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.
Anton Chekhov
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Nothing can be accomplished by logic and ethics.
Anton Chekhov
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What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won't seem important at all.
Anton Chekhov
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Write only of what is important and eternal.
Anton Chekhov
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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.
Anton Chekhov
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we all have too many wheels, screws and valves to judge each other on first impressions or one or two pointers. I don't understand you, you don't understand me and we don't understand ourselves.
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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?
Anton Chekhov
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Oh, dreams! In one night, lying with one's eyes shut, one may sometimes live through more than ten years of happiness.
Anton Chekhov