Anton Chekhov

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.

But if you had asked him what his work was, he would look candidly and openly at you with his large bright eyes through his gold pincenez, and would answer in a soft, velvety, lisping baritone: \'My work is literature.\'

My holy of holies is the human body.

The aim of fiction is absolute and honest truth.

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

Fine. Since the tea is not forthcoming, let's have a philosophical conversation.

This man, who for twenty-five years has been reading and writing about art, and in all that time has never understood anything about art, has for twenty-five years been hashing over other people's ideas about realism, naturalism and all that nonsense; for twenty-five years he has been reading and writing about what intelligent people already know and about what stupid people don't want to know--which means that for twenty-five years he's been taking nothing and making nothing out of it. And with it all, what conceit! W

After us they'll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they'll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the same, a hard life full of secrets, but happy. And a thousand years from now man will still be sighing, \'Oh! Life is so hard!\' and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.

If you want to work on your art, work on your life.

I often wonder: suppose we could begin life over again, knowing what we were doing? Suppose we could use one life, already ended, as a sort of rough draft for another? I think that every one of us would try, more than anything else, not to repeat himself, at the very least he would rearrange his manner of life, he would make sure of rooms like these, with flowers and light ... I have a wife and two daughters, my wife's health is delicate and so on and so on, and if I had to begin life all over again I would not marry.

If I wanted to order a ring for myself, the inscription I should choose would be: \'Nothing passes away.\' I believe that nothing passes away without leaving a trace, and that every step we take, however small, has significance for our present and our future existence.

Life has gone by as if I never lived

What's the use of talking? You can see for yourself that this is a barbarous country; the people have no morals; and the boredom!

You look boldly ahead; isn't it only that you don't see or divine anything terrible in the future; because life is still hidden from your young eyes.

A hungry dog believes in nothing but meat.

Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and when he dies the five senses that we know perish with him, and the other ninety-five remain alive... Everything that is unattainable for us now will one day be near and clear... But we must work.

In all my life I never met anyone so frivolous as you two, so crazy and unbusinesslike. I tell you in plain Russian your property is going to be sold and you don't seem to understand what I say.

My mistress has come home; at last I've seen her. Now I'm ready to die.

It is easy to be a philosopher in academia, but it is very difficult to be a philosopher in life.

An artist observes, selects, guesses, and synthesizes.

If in the first act you introduce a gun, by the third act you have to use it.

Love, respect, and friendship do unite a people as well as a common hatred does.

If many remedies are prescribed for an illness you can be sure it has no cure

It is the writer's business not to accuse and not to prosecute, but to champion the guilty, once they are condemned and suffer punishment.

What a fine weather today! Can't choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.

If one wants to lead a good life, A HUMAN LIFE, one must work.

The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.

And what does it mean -- dying? Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and only the five we know are lost at death, while the other ninety-five remain alive.

Three o'clock in the morning. The soft April night is looking at my windows and caressingly winking at me with its stars. I can't sleep, I am so happy.

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?