Quotes by Anton Chekhov

Dont forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary confinement is a great deal harder to bear than compulsory.

The teacher must be an actor, an artist,passionately in love with his work.

When an actor has money he doesnt send letters but telegrams.

Any idiot can face a crisis - its this day-to-day living that wears you out.

Any idiot can face a crisis-its day to day living that wears you out.

If you cry Forward you must make plain in what direction to go.

Men are made for happiness and anyone who is completely happy has a right to say to himself: I am doing Gods will on earth.

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.

Medicine is my lawful wife. Literature is my mistress.

A man and a woman marry because both of them dont know what to do with themselves.

Conciseness is the sister of talent.

Posterity will say as usual: In the past things were better the present is worse than the past.

My own experience is that once a story has been written one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying . . . one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If in the first chapter you say there is a gun hanging on the wall you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story.

In my opinion it is not the writers job to solve such problems as God, pessimism, etc; his job is merely to record who, under what conditions, said or thought what about God or pessimism. The artist is not meant to be a judge of his characters and what they say; his only job is to be an impartial witness. I heard two Russians in a muddled conversation about pessimism, a conversation that solved nothing; all I am bound to do is reproduce that conversation exactly as I heard it. Drawing conclusions is up to the jury, that is, the readers. My only job is to be talented, that is, to know how to distinguish important testimony from unimportant, to place my characters in the proper light and speak their language.

The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to.

Lebedev: ...Therell be a scandal, the tongues of the whole district will buzz with gossip, but its better to go through a scandal, isnt it, than to destroy yourself for your whole life.

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

Dont tell me the moon is shining show me the glint of light on broken glass.

The sea has neither meaning nor pity.

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.