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

Anton Chekhov Quotes

You really need to be alone when you are travelling. It’s much more interesting to sit in a coach or in your room with your own thoughts than it is to be with people.

— Anton Chekhov

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

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

The conceited, benevolent tone of the prefaces, the abundance of translator’s notes, which disturb my concentration, the parenthetical question marks and sic’s that the translator generously scatters through the article or book, are for me like an encroachment both upon the person of the author and upon my independence as a reader.

— Anton Chekhov

Loud voices were heard from upstairs. “Madame Kushkin is in a fit, most likely, or else she has.

— Anton Chekhov

We attach no value to our own opinion even when it is wise, but tremble before the opinion of all sorts of stupid people.

— Anton Chekhov

His soul is still hovering here, near his body,” says the young man. “It does not depart from the body for three days.

— Anton Chekhov

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

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

— Anton Chekhov

We can’t make her see anything, Pyotr Alexandritch! We are simply done. We talk of one thing and she talks of something else.

— Anton Chekhov

Oh, if only this new, bright life would come sooner, when one could look one’s fate directly and boldly in the eye, be conscious of one’s rightness, be cheerful, free! And this life would come sooner or later!

— Anton Chekhov

But perhaps the universe is suspended on the tooth of some monster.

— Anton Chekhov

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

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

A journal like a poem or a painting must be the product of a single mind and reflect a single will.

— Anton Chekhov

Such women imagine that they will be in love for ever, and abandon themselves with tragic intensity.

— Anton Chekhov

Knowledge and evidence. The consumptive and the scrofulous are recognized by their ailments, and the immoral and mad by their acts.

— Anton Chekhov

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

He told lies with the same relish with which he ate herring and drank.

— Anton Chekhov

This thirst for personal success, and this continual concentration of the mind in one direction, makes people cold, and.

— Anton Chekhov
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