Top 300 Anton Chekhov Quotes (2023 Update)
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201. “Do you see that tree? It is dead but it still sways in the wind with the others. I think it would be like that with me. That if I died I would still be part of life in one way or another.”

— Anton Chekhov

202. “A good person will feel guilty even before a dog.”

— Anton Chekhov

203. “When you want to touch the reader’s heart, try to be colder. It gives their grief as it were, a background, against which it stands out in greater relief.”

— Anton Chekhov

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

— Anton Chekhov

205. “And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.”

— Anton Chekhov

206. “Writers are as jealous as pigeons.”

— Anton Chekhov

207. “The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others.”

— Anton Chekhov

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

— Anton Chekhov

209. “How unbearable at times are people who are happy, people for whom everything works out.”

— Anton Chekhov

210. “Death is terrifying, but it would be even more terrifying to find out that you are going to live forever and never die.”

— Anton Chekhov

211. “It’s not a matter of old or new forms; a person writes without thinking about any forms, he writes because it flows freely from his soul.”

— Anton Chekhov

212. “Satiation, like any state of vitality, always contains a degree of impudence, and that impudence emerges first and foremost when the sated man instructs the hungry one.”

— Anton Chekhov

213. “The desire to serve the common good must without fail be a requisite of the soul, a necessity for personal happiness; if it issuesnot from there, but from theoretical or other considerations, it is not at all the same thing.”

— Anton Chekhov

214. “What a delight it is to respect people!”

— Anton Chekhov

215. “An artist’s flair is sometimes worth a scientist’s brains.”

— Anton Chekhov

216. “When men ask me how I know so much about men, they get a simple answer: everything I know about men, I learned from me.”

— Anton Chekhov

217. “Death can only be profitable: there’s no need to eat, drink, pay taxes, offend people, and since a person lies in a grave for hundreds or thousands of years, if you count it up the profit turns out to be enormous.”

— Anton Chekhov

218. “The more cultured a man, the less fortunate he is.”

— Anton Chekhov

219. “It’s even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday.”

— Anton Chekhov

220. “Our pride and self-importance are European, while our development and actions are Asiatic.”

— Anton Chekhov

221. “There are no small number of people in this world who, solitary by nature, always try to go back into their shell like a hermit crab or a snail.”

— Anton Chekhov

222. “Nothing lulls and inebriates like money; when you have a lot, the world seems a better place than it actually is.”

— Anton Chekhov

223. “A woman can become a man’s friend only in the following stages – first an acquantaince, next a mistress, and only then a friend.”

— Anton Chekhov

224. “Three o’clock in the morning. The soft April night is looking at my windows and caressingly winking at me with its stars. I can’t sleep, I am so happy.”

— Anton Chekhov

225. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had champagne.”

— Anton Chekhov

226. “You look boldly ahead; isn’t it only that you don’t see or divine anything terrible in the future; because life is still hidden from your young eyes.”

— Anton Chekhov

227. “It is the writer’s business not to accuse and not to prosecute, but to champion the guilty, once they are condemned and suffer punishment.”

— Anton Chekhov

228. “One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.”

— Anton Chekhov

229. “Lermontov died at age twenty-eight and wrote more than have you and I put together. Talent is recognizable not only by quality, but also by the quantity it yields.”

— Anton Chekhov

230. “Sports are positively essential. It is healthy to engage in sports, they are beautiful and liberal, liberal in the sense that nothing serves quite as well to integrate social classes, etc., than street or public games.”

— Anton Chekhov

231. “It is not only the prisoners who grow coarse and hardened from corporal punishment, but those as well who perpetrate the act or are present to witness it.”

— Anton Chekhov

232. “It’s better to live down a scandal than to ruin one’s life.”

— Anton Chekhov

233. “Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far asblather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material.”

— Anton Chekhov

234. “The problem is that we attempt to solve the simplest questions cleverly, thereby rendering them unusually complex. One should seekthe simple solution.”

— Anton Chekhov

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

— Anton Chekhov

236. “For the salvation of his soul the Muslim digs a well. It would be a fine thing if each of us were to leave behind a school, or a well, or something of the sort, so that life would not pass by and retreat into eternity without a trace.”

— Anton Chekhov

237. “Everything is good in due measure and strong sensations know not measure.”

— Anton Chekhov

238. “To believe in God is not hard. Inquisitors, Byron and Arakcheev believed in Him. No, believe in man!”

— Anton Chekhov

239. “Just as I shall lie alone in the grave, so, in essence, do I live alone.”

— Anton Chekhov

240. “When one longs for a drink, it seems as though one could drink a whole ocean-that is faith; but when one begins to drink, one can only drink altogether two glasses-that is science.”

— Anton Chekhov

241. “Ah, Caviar! I keep on eating it, but can never get my fill. Like olives. It’s a lucky thing it’s not salty.”

— Anton Chekhov

242. “I have no will of my own. Never did. Limp and lily-livered, I always obey – is it possible that’s attractive to women?”

— Anton Chekhov

243. “If you look at anything long enough, say just that wall in front of you – it will come out of that wall.”

— Anton Chekhov

244. “I’ve noticed that people who get married cease to be curious.”

— Anton Chekhov

245. “In countries where there is a mild climate, less effort is expended on the struggle with nature and man is kinder and more gentle.”

— Anton Chekhov

246. “Every coming year is as bad as the previous one, the only difference being that in most cases it is even worse.”

— Anton Chekhov

247. “There are people whom even children’s literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon.”

— Anton Chekhov

248. “If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It’s better to live somehow than not at all.”

— Anton Chekhov

249. “Eyes – the head’s chief of police. They watch and make mental notes.”

— Anton Chekhov

250. “If one wants to lead a good life, A HUMAN LIFE, one must work.”

— Anton Chekhov