Anton Chekhov Quotes

Later on he had met the young man himself at his mother-in-law's. And that was at the time when his wife had taken to being very often absent and coming home at four or five o'clock in the morning, and was constantly asking him to get her a passport for abroad, which he kept refusing to do; and a continual feud went on in the house which made him feel ashamed to face the servants.

Dear and most respected bookcase! I welcome your existence, which has for over one hundred years been devoted to the radiant ideals of goodness and justice.

Wisdom.... comes not from age, but from education and learning.

He always seemed to women different from what he was, and they loved in him not himself, but the man created by their imagination, whom they had been eagerly seeking all their lives; and afterwards, when they noticed their mistake, they loved him all the same.

Despicable means used to achieve laudable goals render the goals themselves despicable.

We learn about life not from pluses alone, but from minuses as well.

It is true that, in poetizing love, we assume in those we love qualities that are lacking in them, and that is a source of continual mistakes and continual miseries for us. But to my thinking it is better, even so; that is, it is better to suffer than to find complacency on the basis of woman being woman and man being man.

To harbor spiteful feelings against ordinary people for not being heroes is possible only for narrow-minded or embittered man.

NINA
Think of me sometimes.

TRIGORIN
I shall never forget you. I shall always remember you as I saw you that bright day — do you recall it? — a week ago, when you wore your light dress, and we talked together, and the white seagull lay on the bench beside us.

TRIGORIN
Why do I hear a note of sadness that wrings my heart in this cry of a pure soul? If at any time you should have need of my life, come and take it.

Existence is tedious, anyway.

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.

One hundred years from now, the people who come after us, for whom our lives are showing the way — will they think of us kindly? Will they remember us with a kind word? I wish to God I could think so.

And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. 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.

It’s easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.