Top 500 Anton Chekhov Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.”

— Anton Chekhov

52. “A hungry dog believes in nothing but meat.”

— Anton Chekhov

53. “Write about this man who, drop by drop, squeezes the slave’s blood out of himself until he wakes one day to find the blood of a real human being – not a slave’s – coursing through his veins.”

— Anton Chekhov

54. “A sweet lie is more gracious for us than a virulent but real truth.”

— Anton Chekhov

55. “The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can’t return even if it wants to.”

— Anton Chekhov

56. “Life on earth is inconceivable without trees.”

— Anton Chekhov

57. “To advise is not to compel.”

— Anton Chekhov

58. “Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.”

— Anton Chekhov

59. “If in the first act you introduce a gun, by the third act you have to use it.”

— Anton Chekhov

60. “I would love to meet a philosopher like Nietzsche on a train or boat and to talk with him all night. Incidentally, I don’t consider his philosophy long-lived. It is not so much persuasive as full of bravura.”

— Anton Chekhov

61. “A good upbringing means not that you won’t spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won’t notice it when someone else does.”

— Anton Chekhov

62. “Try to reason about love, and you will lose your reason.”

— Anton Chekhov

63. “When a person is born, he can embark on only one of three roads of life: if you go right, the wolves will eat you; if you go left, you’ll eat the wolves; if you go straight, you’ll eat yourself.”

— Anton Chekhov

64. “They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.”

— Anton Chekhov

65. “Even in Siberia there is happiness.”

— Anton Chekhov

66. “Despicable means used to achieve laudable goals render the goals themselves despicable.”

— Anton Chekhov

67. “There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.”

— Anton Chekhov

68. “Try to be original in your play and as clever as possible; but don’t be afraid to show yourself foolish; we must have freedom of thinking, and only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.”

— Anton Chekhov

69. “If our life has a meaning, an aim, it has nothing to do with our personal happiness, but something wiser and greater.”

— Anton Chekhov

70. “There is something beautiful, touching and poetic when one person loves more than the other, and the other is indifferent.”

— Anton Chekhov

71. “It’s easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.”

— Anton Chekhov

72. “My holy of holies is the human body.”

— Anton Chekhov

73. “Solomon made a big mistake when he asked for wisdom.”

— Anton Chekhov

74. “A man who doesn’t drink is not, in my opinion, fully a man.”

— Anton Chekhov

75. “It is easy to be a philosopher in academia, but it is very difficult to be a philosopher in life.”

— Anton Chekhov

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

— Anton Chekhov

77. “In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations!”

— Anton Chekhov

78. “I don’t know why one can’t chase two rabbits at the same time, even in the literal sense of those words. If you have the hounds, go ahead and pursue.”

— Anton Chekhov

79. “Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress.”

— Anton Chekhov

80. “In nature a repulsive caterpillar turns into a lovely butterfly. But with human beings it is the other way round: a lovely butterfly turns into a repulsive caterpillar.”

— Anton Chekhov

81. “A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees.”

— Anton Chekhov

82. “Brevity – the sister of talent.”

— Anton Chekhov

83. “In Russia there is no philosophy, but philosophize everything, even the small fry.”

— Anton Chekhov

84. “When a person expends the least amount of motion on one action, that is grace.”

— Anton Chekhov

85. “At the door of every happy person there should be a man with a hammer whose knock would serve as a constant reminder of the existence of unfortunate people.”

— Anton Chekhov

86. “A man wants nothing so badly as a gooseberry farm.”

— Anton Chekhov

87. “When a person doesn’t understand something, he feels internal discord: however he doesn’t search for that discord in himself, as he should, but searches outside of himself. Thence a war develops with that which he doesn’t understand.”

— Anton Chekhov

88. “To harbor spiteful feelings against ordinary people for not being heroes is possible only for narrow-minded or embittered man.”

— Anton Chekhov

89. “The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.”

— Anton Chekhov

90. “You will not become a saint through other people’s sins.”

— Anton Chekhov

91. “For God’s sake, have some self-respect and do not run off at the mouth if your brain is out to lunch.”

— Anton Chekhov

92. “To fear love is to fear life, and those whose fear life are already three parts dead...”

— Anton Chekhov

93. “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.”

— Anton Chekhov

94. “Without a knowledge of languages you feel as if you don’t have a passport.”

— Anton Chekhov

95. “Your talent sets you apart: if you were a toad or a tarantula, even then, people would respect you, for to talent all things are forgiven.”

— Anton Chekhov

96. “He who desires nothing, hopes for nothing, and is afraid of nothing, cannot be an artist.”

— Anton Chekhov

97. “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.”

— Anton Chekhov

98. “What must human beings be, to destroy what they can never create?”

— Anton Chekhov

99. “What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won’t seem important at all.”

— Anton Chekhov

100. “Be sure not to discuss your hero’s state of mind. Make it clear from his actions.”

— Anton Chekhov