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Not everyone knows how to be silent or to leave in good time. It happens that even people of good breeding fail to notice that their presence provokes in the weary or preoccupied host a feeling akin to hatred, and that this feeling is tensely concealed and covered up with lies.

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
Happens
Silent
Weary
Even
Lies
Host
Provokes
Good
Failing
Covered
Preoccupied
Time
Leave
Manners
Akin
People
Feeling
Notice
Breeding
Lying
Presence
Concealed
Everyone
Fail
Provoking
Feelings
Hatred
Guests

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And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.
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To believe in God is not hard. Inquisitors, Byron and Arakcheev believed in Him. No, believe in man!
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Man is what he believes.
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Everything should be first-rate in a person, his face, clothes, soul and thoughts.
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There is nothing new in art except talent.
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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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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.
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Do you know when you may concede your insignificance? Before God or, perhaps, before the intellect, beauty, or nature, but not before people. Among people, one must be conscious of one's dignity.
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Fine. Since the tea is not forthcoming, let's have a philosophical conversation.
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That can not possibly be, because it could never possibly be.
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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 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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The time's come: there's a terrific thunder-cloud advancing upon us, a mighty storm is coming to freshen us up....It's going to blow away all this idleness and indifference, and prejudice against work....I'm going to work, and in twenty-five or thirty years' time every man and woman will be working.
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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.
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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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My love is like a stone tied round my neck it's dragging me down to the bottom but I love my stone. I can't live without it.
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He who desires nothing, hopes for nothing, and is afraid of nothing, cannot be an artist.
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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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