Anton Chekhov Quotes

We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.

Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?

If ever my life can be of any use to you, come and claim it.

A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages - first an acquantaince, next a mistress, and only then a friend.

There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.

To fear love is to fear life, and those whose fear life are already three parts dead...

The happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burden in silence. Without this silence, happiness would be impossible.

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.

"There are a great many opinions in this world, and a good half of them are professed by people who have never been in trouble."

(The Mill)

The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.

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.

Even in Siberia there is happiness.

I was oppressed with a sense of vague discontent and dissatisfaction with my own life, which was passing so quickly and uninterestingly, and I kept thinking it would be a good thing if I could tear my heart out of my breast, that heart which had grown so weary of life.

Man will become better when you show him what he is like.

These people have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and wild herbs.