Top 500 Anton Chekhov Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that they’ll beproving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven.”

— Anton Chekhov

152. “Hypocrisy is a revolting, psychopathic state.”

— Anton Chekhov

153. “I am now and have always been a stranger to the realm of practical matters.”

— Anton Chekhov

154. “To regard one’s immortality as an exchange of matter is as strange as predicting the future of a violin case once the expensive violin it held has broken and lost its worth.”

— Anton Chekhov

155. “One had better not rush, otherwise dung comes out rather than creative work.”

— Anton Chekhov

156. “The more highly a man is developed on the intellectual and moral side, the more independent he is, the more pleasure life gives him. Socrates, Diogenes, and Marcus Aurelius, were joyful, not sorrowful. And the Apostle tells us: ‘Rejoice continually’; ‘Rejoice and be glad.”

— Anton Chekhov

157. “If you ever have need of my life, come and take it.”

— Anton Chekhov

158. “Everything should be first-rate in a person, his face, clothes, soul and thoughts.”

— Anton Chekhov

159. “Life is a vexatious trap; when a thinking man reaches maturity and attains to full consciousness he cannot help feeling that he is in a trap from which there is no escape.”

— Anton Chekhov

160. “I’m in mourning for my life.”

— Anton Chekhov

161. “Every person lives his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy.”

— Anton Chekhov

162. “If ever my life can be of any use to you, come and claim it.”

— Anton Chekhov

163. “The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.”

— Anton Chekhov

164. “People’s destinies are so different. Some people drag along, unnoticed and boring – they’re all alike, and they’re all unhappy. Then there are others, like for instance you – you’re one in a million. You’re happy –.”

— Anton Chekhov

165. “Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf.”

— Anton Chekhov

166. “One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.”

— Anton Chekhov

167. “MEDVIEDENKO Why do you always wear mourning? MASHA I dress in black to match my life. I am unhappy.”

— Anton Chekhov

168. “Fine. Since the tea is not forthcoming, let’s have a philosophical conversation.”

— Anton Chekhov

169. “There ought to be a man with a hammer behind the door of every happy man.”

— Anton Chekhov

170. “And what does it mean – dying? Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and only the five we know are lost at death, while the other ninety-five remain alive.”

— Anton Chekhov

171. “I think human beings must have faith or must look for faith, otherwise our life is empty, empty. To live and not to know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why there are stars in the sky. You must know why you are alive, or else everything is nonsense, just blowing in the wind.”

— Anton Chekhov

172. “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.”

— Anton Chekhov

173. “Never bring a cannon on stage in Act I unless you intend to fire it by the last act.”

— Anton Chekhov

174. “Love is a scandal of the personal sort.”

— Anton Chekhov

175. “I should think I’m going to be a perpetual student.”

— Anton Chekhov

176. “Once a man gets a fixed idea, there’s nothing to be done.”

— Anton Chekhov

177. “A naive man is nothing better than a fool. But you women contrive to be naive in such a way that in you it seems sweet, and gentle, and proper, and not as silly as it really is.”

— Anton Chekhov

178. “When all is said and done, no literature can outdo the cynicism of real life; you won’t intoxicate with one glass someone who has already drunk up a whole barrel.”

— Anton Chekhov

179. “All great sages are as despotic as generals, and as ungracious and indelicate as generals, because they are confident of their impunity.”

— Anton Chekhov

180. “Reason and justice tell me there’s more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism.”

— Anton Chekhov

181. “There isn’t a Monday that would not cede its place to Tuesday.”

— Anton Chekhov

182. “A man can deceive his fiancee or his mistress as much as he likes and, in the eyes of a woman he loves, an ass may pass for a philosopher. But a daughter is a different matter.”

— Anton Chekhov

183. “Only one who loves can remember so well.”

— Anton Chekhov

184. “I kept thinking how marvellous it would be if I could somehow tear my heart, which felt so heavy, out of my chest.”

— Anton Chekhov

185. “In general, Russia suffers from a frightening poverty in the sphere of facts and a frightening wealth of all types of arguments.”

— Anton Chekhov

186. “I am not a liberal, not a conservative, not a believer in gradual progress, not a monk. I should like to be a free artist and nothing more.”

— Anton Chekhov

187. “Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.”

— Anton Chekhov

188. “There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and simplicity in our interactions. Be rude when you’re angry, laugh when something is funny, and answer when you’re asked.”

— Anton Chekhov

189. “You confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for an artist.”

— Anton Chekhov

190. “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.”

— Anton Chekhov

191. “I don’t understand anything about the ballet; all I know is that during the intervals the ballerinas stink like horses.”

— Anton Chekhov

192. “Oh, I have now a mania for shortness. Whatever I read – my own or other people’s works – it all seems to me not short enough.”

— Anton Chekhov

193. “Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.”

— Anton Chekhov

194. “Each of us is full of too many wheels, screws and valves to permit us to judge one another on a first impression or by two or three external signs.”

— Anton Chekhov

195. “Watching a woman make Russian pancakes, you might think that she was calling on the spirits or extracting from the batter the philosopher’s stone.”

— Anton Chekhov

196. “To judge between good or bad, between successful and unsuccessful would take the eye of a God.”

— Anton Chekhov

197. “A man and a woman marry because both of them do not know what to do with themselves.”

— Anton Chekhov

198. “By nature servile, people attempt at first glance to find signs of good breeding in the appearance of those who occupy more exalted stations.”

— Anton Chekhov

199. “A fiance is neither this nor that: he’s left one shore, but not yet reached the other.”

— Anton Chekhov

200. “If there’s any illness for which people offer many remedies, you may be sure that particular illness is incurable, I think.”

— Anton Chekhov