Anton Chekhov Quotes

Do silly things. Foolishness is a great deal more vital and healthy than our straining and striving after a meaningful life.

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.

We are accustomed to live in hopes of good weather, a good harvest, a nice love-affair, hopes of becoming rich or getting the office of chief of police, but I've never noticed anyone hoping to get wiser. We say to ourselves: it'll be better under a new tsar, and in two hundred years it'll still be better, and nobody tries to make this good time come tomorrow. On the whole, life gets more and more complex every day and moves on its own sweet will, and people get more and more stupid, and get isolated from life in ever-increasing numbers.

Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.

Everything on earth is beautiful, everything — except what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own human dignity.

Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.

Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.

When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can't be cured.

There is nothing new in art except talent.

He is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.

When a woman isn't beautiful, people always say, 'You have lovely eyes, you have lovely hair.'

Reason and justice tell me there's more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism.

One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making a mistake.

The personal life of every individual is based on secrecy, and perhaps it is partly for that reason that civilized man is so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.

People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about.

No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand... Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing.

If you cry 'forward', you must without fail make plain in what direction to go.

The University brings out all abilities, including incapability.

People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.

If I had listened to the critics I'd have died drunk in the gutter

People are far more sincere and good-humored at speeding their parting guests than on meeting them.

When an actor has money he doesn't send letters, he sends telegrams.

Medvienko: Why do you always wear black? Masha: I am in mourning for my life. I am unhappy.

A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.

The more refined one is, the more unhappy.