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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.

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
Thing
Personal
Considerations
Good
Common
Theoretical
Happiness
Consideration
Desire
Necessity
Helping
Charity
Soul
Serve
Without
Fail
Must
Failing
Requisite

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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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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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.
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The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.
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It's immoral to steal, but you can take things.
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If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.
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When one sees one of the romantic creatures before him he imagines he is looking at some holy being, so wonderful that its one breath could dissolve him in a sea of a thousand charms and delights but if one looks into the soul -- it's nothing but a common crocodile.
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The bourgeoisie is very fond of so-called practical types and novels with happy endings, since they soothe it with the idea that one can both accumulate capital and preserve innocence, be a beast and at the same time be happy...
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In my opinion it is harmful to place important things in the hands of philanthropy, which in Russia is marked by a chance character. Nor should important matters depend on leftovers, which are never there. I would prefer that the government treasury take care of it.
Anton Chekhov
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[Six principles that make for a good story:] 1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature 2. total objectivity 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects 4. extreme brevity 5. audacity and originality: flee the stereotype 6. compassion.
Anton Chekhov
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Revolting means for good ends make the ends of themselves revolting.
Anton Chekhov
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The happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burden in silence. Without this silence, happiness would be impossible.
Anton Chekhov
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Everything should be first-rate in a person, his face, clothes, soul and thoughts.
Anton Chekhov
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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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You confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for an artist.
Anton Chekhov
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Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.
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A good person will feel guilty even before a dog.
Anton Chekhov
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He who desires nothing, hopes for nothing, and is afraid of nothing, cannot be an artist.
Anton Chekhov
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Moscow is a city that has much suffering ahead of it.
Anton Chekhov
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That can not possibly be, because it could never possibly be.
Anton Chekhov