Quotes from Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

You look at any poetic creature: muslin, ether, demigoddess, millions of delights; then you look into the soul and find the most ordinary crocodile!

The unhappy are egotistical, base, unjust, cruel, and even less capable of understanding one another than are idiots. Unhappiness does not unite people, but separates them.

If you cant distinguish people from lap-dogs, you shouldnt undertake philanthropic work.

Despite your best efforts, you could not invent a better police force for literature than criticism and the authors own conscience.

There are people whom even childrens literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon.

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

It is easier to ask of the poor than of the rich.

I observed that after marriage people cease to be curious.

Although you may tell lies, people will believe you, if only you speak with authority.

If you wish women to love you, be original; I know a man who used to wear felt boots summer and winter, and women fell in love with him.

Better to perish from fools than to accept praises from them.

How intolerable people are sometimes who are happy and successful in everything.

When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters but telegrams.

When one longs for a drink, it seems as though one could drink a whole oceanthat is faith; but when one begins to drink, one can only drink altogether two glassesthat is science.

A nice man would feel ashamed even before a dog.

Ordinary hypocrites pretend to be doves; political and literary hypocrites pretend to be eagles. But don't be disconcerted by their aquiline appearance. They are not eagles, but rats or dogs.

Mankind has conceived history as a series of battles; hitherto it has considered fighting as the main thing in life.

It has become customary to say that a man needs only six feet of land. But a corpse needs six feet, not a person.

The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it cant return even if it wants to.

If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. Its better to live somehow than not at all.

There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined.

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

I promise to be an excellent husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, will not appear every day in my sky.

Without a knowledge of languages you feel as if you dont have a passport.