Top 500 Anton Chekhov Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “It’s much more honest to deceive a man than to break up his family life and injure his reputation. I understand.”

— Anton Chekhov

352. “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

353. “All these torments which the fish undergoes during the period of love are called “migration to death” in Russian, because they inevitably lead to death, and not a single one of the fish ever returns to the ocean – they all die in the rivers. “Irresistible bouts of erotic attraction leading to one’s demise,” says Middendorf.”

— Anton Chekhov

354. “A good man’s indifference is as good as any religion.”

— Anton Chekhov

355. “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

356. “And the wind, the wind! The bare birches and cherry-trees, unable to endure its rude caresses, bowed low down to the ground and wailed: “God, for what sin hast Thou bound us to the earth and will not let us go free?”

— Anton Chekhov

357. “Those who take an official, business-like attitude towards other people’s suffering, like judges, policemen, doctors, from force of habit, as time goes by, become callous to such a degree that they would be unable to treat their clients otherwise than formally even if they wanted to; in this respect they are no different from the peasant who slaughters sheep and calves in his backyard without noticing the blood.”

— Anton Chekhov

358. “She talks philosophy and tries to commit suicide every now and again, apparently in order to annoy her husband.”

— Anton Chekhov

359. “How fortunate Buddha, Mahomed, and Shakespeare were that their kind relations and doctors did not cure them of their ecstasy and their inspiration.”

— Anton Chekhov

360. “I used to think every fool was out of his senses, but now I see that lack of sense is a man’s normal state, and you are perfectly normal.”

— Anton Chekhov

361. “But we all have to die, you know. Death is not a potato.”

— Anton Chekhov

362. “A woman can only become a man’s friend after having first been his acquaintance and then his beloved – then she becomes his friend.”

— Anton Chekhov

363. “When real life is wanting one must create an illusion. It is better than nothing.”

— Anton Chekhov

364. “There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him.”

— Anton Chekhov

365. “There is nothing good in this world that does not have some filth in its origin.”

— Anton Chekhov

366. “So it is in life... In search of the truth, people make two steps forward and one step back. Sufferings, mistakes, and the tedium of life throw them back, but the thirst for truth and a stubborn will drive them on and on. And who knows? Maybe they’ll row their way to the real truth...”

— Anton Chekhov

367. “You see and hear that they lie,” said Ivan Ivanovitch, turning over on the other side, “and they call you a fool for putting up with their lying. You endure insult and humiliation, and dare not openly say that you are on the side of the honest and the free, and you lie and smile yourself; and all that for the sake of a crust of bread, for the sake of a warm corner, for the sake of a wretched little worthless rank in the service. No, one can’t go on living like this.”

— Anton Chekhov

368. “There is a saying: the woman had no cares, so she bought a pig. The Luganoviches had no worries, so they made friends with me.”

— Anton Chekhov

369. “Faith without works is dead, but works without faith are worse still – mere waste of time and nothing more.”

— Anton Chekhov

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

— Anton Chekhov

371. “If you could only see your face, your gestures! Oh, how tedious your life must be.”

— Anton Chekhov

372. “That’s it, I guess. Just go on living, whether you feel like it or not.”

— Anton Chekhov

373. “You are confusing two notions, “the solution of a problem” and “the correct posing of the question”. Only the second is essential for the artist.”

— Anton Chekhov

374. “Life’s all done, just as if I never even lived it...”

— Anton Chekhov

375. “The bullet is followed by the silence of the grave, but a wasted youth is followed by years of grief and agonising memories.”

— Anton Chekhov

376. “The sunlight and the sounds told him that somewhere in this world there is a pure, refined, poetical life. But where was it?”

— Anton Chekhov

377. “For Masha: who doesn’t know where she came from or why she goes on living.”

— Anton Chekhov

378. “So go! E finita la comedia!”

— Anton Chekhov

379. “You refer me to the natural order of things, to the law of cause and effect, but is there order or natural law in that I, a living, thinking creature, should stand by a ditch until it fills up, or is narrowed, when I could jump it or throw a bridge over it? Tell me, I say, why should we wait? Wait, when we have no strength to live, and yet must live and are full of the desire to live!”

— Anton Chekhov

380. “He read like a man afloat on the sea, surrounded by the wreckage of his ship, trying to save his life by desperately clutching first to one fragment and then another.”

— Anton Chekhov

381. “You are right to demand that an author take conscious stock of what he is doing, but you are confusing two concepts: answering the questions and formulating them correctly. Only the latter is required of an author.”

— Anton Chekhov

382. “The fear of death is an animal passion which must be overcome. Only those who believe in a future life and tremble for sins committed, can logically fear death.”

— Anton Chekhov

383. “And the existence is tedious, anyway; it is a senseless, dirty business, this life.”

— Anton Chekhov

384. “You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.”

— Anton Chekhov

385. “Those who suffer are egoistic, angry, unjust, and cruel, and less able to understand one another than really stupid people. Misfortune, far from uniting people, separates them, and even when it might be supposed that similarity of misfortune ought to bring people together, they show themselves a great deal more unjust and ruthless than do those who are comparatively content.”

— Anton Chekhov

386. “Man is endowed with reason and the power to create, so that he may increase that which has been given him, but until now he has not created, but demolished.”

— Anton Chekhov

387. “We can’t always know the whys and wherefores,′ the old man said. ‘A bird’s given two wings, not four, because it can fly with two; so a man’s not given to know everything, but only a half or a quarter. As much as he needs to know in order to live, so much he knows.”

— Anton Chekhov

388. “Not to sleep during the night means to be aware every moment of your abnormality, and therefore I wait impatiently for morning and daylight, when I have the right not to sleep.”

— Anton Chekhov

389. “So far only one incontestable truth has been uttered about love: ‘This is a great mystery.”

— Anton Chekhov

390. “The Lie which elates us is dearer than a thousand sober truths.”

— Anton Chekhov

391. “I yearned for mental tranquility, health, fresh air, good food. I was becoming a dreamer, and, like a dreamer, I did not know exactly what I wanted.”

— Anton Chekhov

392. “I look upon labels and tags as prejudices. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence and lies, no matter what form the latter two take. Such is the program I would adhere to if I were a major artist.”

— Anton Chekhov

393. “But, as I was saying, life holds nothing for me; my race is run. I am old, I am tired, I am trivial; my sensibilities are dead. I could never attach myself to any one again.”

— Anton Chekhov

394. “There is no greater sorrow than to know another’s secret when you cannot help them.”

— Anton Chekhov

395. “I am a book-worm and a scholar, and am unfamiliar with practical affairs.”

— Anton Chekhov

396. “Strange indecision!”

— Anton Chekhov

397. “In your veins flows a mermaid’s blood, so be a mermaid.”

— Anton Chekhov

398. “But it is difficult to strike a match against a crumbling stone.”

— Anton Chekhov

399. “People who have an official, professional relation to other men’s sufferings – for instance, judges, police officers, doctors – in course of time, through habit, grow so callous that they cannot, even if they wish it, take any but a formal attitude to their clients; in this respect they are not different from the peasant who slaughters sheep and calves in the back-yard, and does not notice the blood.”

— Anton Chekhov

400. “But is eternal truth of use to man and within his reach, if there is no eternal life?” “There is eternal life,” said the monk.”

— Anton Chekhov