Top 500 Anton Chekhov Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “That can not possibly be, because it could never possibly be.”

— Anton Chekhov

302. “A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.”

— Anton Chekhov

303. “Isolation in creative work is an onerous thing. Better to have negative criticism than nothing at all.”

— Anton Chekhov

304. “It is depressing to hear the unfortunate or dying man jest.”

— Anton Chekhov

305. “It is a poor thing for the writer to take on that which he doesn’t understand.”

— Anton Chekhov

306. “I think that it would be less difficult to live eternally than to be deprived of sleep throughout life.”

— Anton Chekhov

307. “An actress without talent, forty years old, ate a partridge for dinner, and I felt sorry for the partridge, for it occurred to me that in its life it had been more talented, more sensible, and more honest than the actress.”

— Anton Chekhov

308. “The bourgeoisie loves so-called “positive” types and novels with happy endings since they lull one into thinking that it is fine to simultaneously acquire capital and maintain one’s innocence, to be a beast and still be happy.”

— Anton Chekhov

309. “Moscow is a city that has much suffering ahead of it.”

— Anton Chekhov

310. “But if you had asked him what his work was, he would look candidly and openly at you with his large bright eyes through his gold pincenez, and would answer in a soft, velvety, lisping baritone: “My work is literature.””

— Anton Chekhov

311. “Everyone judges plays as if they were very easy to write. They don’t know that it is hard to write a good play, and twice as hardand tortuous to write a bad one.”

— Anton Chekhov

312. “The air of one’s native country is the most healthy air.”

— Anton Chekhov

313. “The critics suppose that it is easy to write a play. They aren’t aware that writing a good play is difficult and writing a bad one is twice as hard.”

— Anton Chekhov

314. “Great Jove angry is no longer Jove.”

— Anton Chekhov

315. “Not one of our mortal gauges is suitable for evaluating non-existence, for making judgments about that which is not a person.”

— Anton Chekhov

316. “In short stories it is better to say not enough than to say too much, because, because – I don’t know why.”

— Anton Chekhov

317. “No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith.”

— Anton Chekhov

318. “In one-act pieces there should be only rubbish that is their strength.”

— Anton Chekhov

319. “Write about how this young man squeezes the slave out of himself drop by drop and how one fine morning he wakes to find that the blood coursing through his veins is no longer the blood of a slave but that of a real human being.”

— Anton Chekhov

320. “I swear fearfully at the conventions of the stage.”

— Anton Chekhov

321. “If you can’t distinguish people from lap-dogs, you shouldn’t undertake philanthropic work.”

— Anton Chekhov

322. “A person loves to talk about his illnesses although that is the least interesting part of his life.”

— Anton Chekhov

323. “And it is the way with us that you may express disapproval of the sun or the moon, or anything you like, but God preserve you from touching the Liberals! Heaven forbid!”

— Anton Chekhov

324. “Sometimes we go to a play and after the curtain has been up five minutes we have a sense of being able to settle back in the arms of the playwright. Instinctively we know that the playwright knows his business.”

— Anton Chekhov

325. “The more simply we look at ticklish questions, the more placid will be our lives and relationships.”

— Anton Chekhov

326. “A grimy fly can soil the entire wall and a small, dirty little act can ruin the entire proceedings.”

— Anton Chekhov

327. “To leave town, and the struggle and the swim of life, and go and hide yourself in a farmhouse is not life – it is egoism, laziness; it is a kind of monasticism, but monasticism without action. A man needs, not six feet of land, not a farm, but the whole earth, all Nature, where in full liberty he can display all the properties and qualities of the free spirit.”

— Anton Chekhov

328. “I confessed my love for her, and with a burning pain in my heart I realized how unnecessary, petty, and deceptive everything which had got in the way of our love had been. I realized that when you love someone, your reasoning about that love should be based on what is supreme, on what is more important than happiness or unhappiness, sin or virtue, in the way that they are usually understood, otherwise it is not worth reasoning at all.”

— Anton Chekhov

329. “There are in life such confluences of circumstances that render the reproach that we are not Voltaires most inopportune.”

— Anton Chekhov

330. “Please leave me alone. I’m dreaming.”

— Anton Chekhov

331. “I understand that in our work – doesn’t matter whether it’s acting or writing – what’s important isn’t fame or glamour, none of the things I used to dream about, it’s the ability to endure.”

— Anton Chekhov

332. “There is something sad, dreamy, and in the highest degree poetic in a lonely grave... You can hear its silence, and in this silence you sense the presence of the soul of the unknown person who lies under the cross. Is it good for this soul in the steppe? Does it languish.”

— Anton Chekhov

333. “To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards.”

— Anton Chekhov

334. “I love him, love him. He’s a millstone round my neck – he’ll take me to the bottom with him. But I love this millstone of mine – I can’t live without it.”

— Anton Chekhov

335. “True happiness is impossible without solitude. The fallen angel probably betrayed God because he longed for solitude, which angels do not know.”

— Anton Chekhov

336. “My life has been a failure. I am clever and brave and strong. If I had lived a normal life I might have become another Schopenhauer or Dostoieffski. I am losing my head!”

— Anton Chekhov

337. “Neither I nor anyone else knows what a standard is. We all recognize a dishonorable act, but have no idea what honor is.”

— Anton Chekhov

338. “Gurov thought how in reality everything is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence.”

— Anton Chekhov

339. “The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak different languages but the same flame burns in them all. Oh, if you only knew what unearthly happiness my soul feels now from being able to understand them.”

— Anton Chekhov

340. “I don’t know what sadness, grief, or boredom is. Here I am not asleep; I suffer from sleeplessness, but I am not dull. I say it in earnest; I begin to feel perplexed.”

— Anton Chekhov

341. “Come, my dear, my precious one, be sensible! You have mermaid blood in your veins – well, then, be a mermaid! Let yourself go for once in your life: Fall head over ears in love with some water goblin, plunge headlong into the whirlpool with him, and leave the Herr Professor and all of us gasping with surprise.”

— Anton Chekhov

342. “Can words such as Orthodox, Jew, or Catholic really express some sort of exclusive personal virtues or merits?”

— Anton Chekhov

343. “They say man only needs six feet of Earth. But it is a corpse, and not man, which needs these six feet.”

— Anton Chekhov

344. “Desription should be very brief and have an incidental nature.”

— Anton Chekhov

345. “Lonely people read a great deal, but say little and hear little. Life for them is mysterious; they are mystics and often see the devil where he is not.”

— Anton Chekhov

346. “When the geese have cackled they will be still again. First they cackle and then they stop.”

— Anton Chekhov

347. “And is it not ridiculous to think of justice when society greets all violence as a reasonable and expedient necessity, and any act of mercy – an acquittal, for instance – provokes a great outburst of dissatisfied, vengeful feeling?”

— Anton Chekhov

348. “It’s much more honest to deceive a man than to break up his family life and injure his reputation. I understand.”

— Anton Chekhov

349. “Happiness does not exist, nor should it, and if there is any meaning or purpose in life, they are not in our peddling little happiness, but in something reasonable and grand. Do good!”

— Anton Chekhov

350. “I am drunk. I usually only drink like this once a month. At such times my audacity and temerity know no bounds. I feel capable of anything. I attempt the most difficult operations and do them magnificently. The most brilliant plans for the future take shape in my head. I am no longer a poor fool of a doctor, but mankind’s greatest benefactor. I evolve my own system of philosophy and all of you seem to crawl at my feet like so many insects or microbes.”

— Anton Chekhov