Quotes by Anton Chekhov

Man is what he believes.

Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress. When I get fed up with one, I spend the night with the other

Except for two or three older writers, all modern literature seems to me not literature but some sort of handicraft, which exists only so as to be encouraged, though one is reluctant to use its products.

Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress. When I get fed up with one, I spend the night with the other. Though it is irregular, it is less boring this way, and besides, neither of them loses anything through my infidelity.

Anna Petrovna: Kolya, my dearest, stay at home.Ivanov: My love, my unhappy darling, I beg you, dont stop me going out in the evenings. Its cruel and unjust on my part, but let me commit that injustice. Its an agony for me at home. As soon as the sun disappears, my spirit begins to be weighed down by depression. What depression! Dont ask why. I myself dont know. I swear by Gods truth I dont know. Here Im in anguish, I go to the Lebedevs and there its still worse; I return from there and here its depression again, and so all night... Simply despair!

Anna Petrovna: Do you know what, Kolya? Try and sing, laugh, get angry, as you once did... You stay in, well laugh and drink fruit liqueur and well drive away your depression in a flash. Ill sing if you like. Or else lets go and sit in the dark in your study as we used to, and youll tell me about your depression... You have such suffering eyes. Ill look into them and cry, and well both feel better.

Ivanov: With a heavy head, with a slothful spirit, exhausted, overstretched, broken, without faith, without love, without a goal, I roam like a shadow among men and I dont know who I am, why Im alive, what I want. And I now think that love is nonsense, that embraces are cloying, that theres no sense in work, that song and passionate speeches are vulgar and outmoded. And everywhere I take with me depression, chill boredom, dissatisfaction, revulsion from life... I am destroyed, irretrievably!

Lebedev: A time has come of sorrow and sadness for you. Man, my dear friend, is like a samovar. It doesnt always stand on a shelf in the chill but sometimes they put hot coals in it and it goes psh... psh! This comparison is worthless but you wont think up a cleverer one.

A man who under the influence of mental pain or unbearably oppressive suffering sends a bullet through his own head is called a suicide; but for those who give freedom to their pitiful, soul-debasing passions in the holy days of spring and youth there is no name in mans vocabulary. After the bullet follows the peace of the grave: ruined youth is followed by years of grief and painful recollections. He who has profaned his spring will understand the present condition of my soul. I am not yet old, or grey, but I no longer live. Psychiaters tell us that a solider, who was wounded at Waterloo, went mad, and afterwards assured everybody - and believed it himself - that he had died at Waterloo, and that what was now considered to be him was only his shadow, a reflection of the past. I am now experiencing something resembling this semi-death..

Only one who loves can remember so well.

Ivanov: No, my clever young thing, its not a question of romance. I say as before God that I will endure everything - depression and mental illness and ruin and the loss of my wife and premature old age and loneliness - but I cannot tolerate, cannot endure being ridiculous in my own eyes. Im dying of shame at the thought that I, a healthy, strong man, have turned into some sort of Hamlet or Manfred, some sort of superfluous man... devil knows precisely what! There are pitiful people who are flattered by being called Hamlet or superfluous men, but for me its a disgrace! It stirs up my pride, Im overcome by shame and I suffer...

But then theres loneliness. However you might philosophise about it, loneliness is a terrible thing, my dear fellow… Although in reality, of course, its absolutely of no importance!

Ive never been in love. Ive dreamt of it day and night, but my heart is like a fine piano no one can play because the key is lost.

MASHA: Isn’t there some meaning?TOOZENBACH: Meaning? … Look out there, it’s snowing. What’s the meaning of that?

HELENA. What a fine day! Not too hot. [A pause.]VOITSKI. A fine day to hang oneself.

With total rapture and delight he talks about the birds which he can see from his prison window, and which he had never noticed before, when he was a minister. Now of course, after hes been released, he doesnt notice the birds anymore, just as beforehand. In the same way you wont notice Moscow, when you actually live there.

For Gods sake, have some self-respect and do not run off at the mouth if your brain is out to lunch.

Anna Petrovna: I am beginning to think, doctor, that fate has cheated me. The majority of people, who maybe are no better than I am, are happy and pay nothing for that happiness. I have paid for everything, absolutely everything! And how dearly! Why have I paid such terrible interest?

I long to embrace, to include in my own short life, all that is accessible to man. I long to speak, to read, to wield a hammer in a great factory, to keep watch at sea, to plow. I want to be walking along the Nevsky Prospect, or in the open fields, or on the ocean — wherever my imagination ranges.

I long to embrace, to include in my own short life, all that is accessible to man.