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
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.
If our life has a meaning, an aim, it has nothing to do with our personal happiness, but something wiser and greater.
An enormously vast field lies between "God exists" and "there is no God." The truly wise man traverses it with great difficulty. A Russian knows one or the other of these two extremes, but is not interested in the middle ground. He usually knows nothing, or very little.
They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.
Any idiot can face a crisis, it is this day-to-day living that wears you out.
A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer. He is a man who has signed a contract with his conscious and his sense of duty.
Medvienko: Why do you always wear black? Masha: I am in mourning for my life. I am unhappy.
Only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.
It's a long time since I drank champagne.
If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry.
If you cry "Forward" you must be sure to make clear the direction in which to go. Don't you see that if you fail to do that and simply call out the word to a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions?
The only difference between doctors and lawyers is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you, too.
Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.
He was a rationalist, but he had to confess that he liked the ringing of church bells.