Quote

One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that they'll be proving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven.

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
Prove
Refute
Technology
Proving
Perfect
Precision
Words
Twice
Language
Extent
Two
Mathematical
Anything
Seven
People
Soon

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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.
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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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It is easier to ask of the poor than of the rich.
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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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Do you know, Ivan Bunin recalls Anton Chekhov saying to him in 1899, near the end of his too-short life, for how many years I shall be read? Seven. Why seven? Bunin asked. Well, Chekhov answered, seven and a half then.
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There are people whom even children's literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon.
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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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I let myself go at the beginning and write with an easy mind, but by the time I get to the middle I begin to grow timid and to fear my story will be too long. . .That is why the beginning of my stories is always very promising and looks as though I were starting on a novel, and the middle is huddled and timid, and the end is...like fireworks.
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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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To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards.
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Every person lives his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy.
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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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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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But if you had asked him what his work was, he would look candidly and openly at you with his large bright eyes through his gold pincenez, and would answer in a soft, velvety, lisping baritone: My work is literature.
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To dine, drink champagne, raise a racket and make speeches about the people's consciousness, the people's conscience, freedom andso forth while servants in tails are scurrying around your table, just like serfs, and out in the severe cold on the street await coachmen--this is the same as lying to the holy spirit.
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Even while lying, you'll be believed if you speak with authority.
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Watching a woman make Russian pancakes, you might think that she was calling on the spirits or extracting from the batter the philosopher's stone.
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In all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.
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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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In Moscow you sit in a huge room at a restaurant you know no one and no one knows you, and at the same time you don't feel a stranger. But here you know everyone and everyone knows you, and yet you are a stranger - a stranger... A stranger, and lonely...
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