Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short story writer who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth29 January 1860
CityTaganrog, Russia
CountryRussian Federation
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.
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?
Advertising is the very essence of democracy.
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.
The University brings out all abilities, including incapability.
If ever my life can be of any use to you, come and claim it.
To harbor spiteful feelings against ordinary people for not being heroes is possible only for narrow-minded or embittered man.
My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and absolute freedom--freedom from violence and falsehood, no matter how the last two manifest themselves.
To a chemist, nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist; he must abandon the subjective line; he must know that dungheaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.
...and with a burning pain in my heart I realized how unnecessary, how petty, and how deceptive all that had hindered us from loving was. I understood that when you love you must either, in your reasonings about that love, start from what is highest, from what is more important than happiness or unhappiness, sin or virtue in their accepted meaning, or you must not reason at all.
I don’t understand anything about the ballet; all I know is that during the intervals the ballerinas stink like horses.
One usually dislikes a play while writing it, but afterward it grows on one. Let others judge and make decisions,
Calculating selfishness is the annihilation of self.
When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can't be cured.