Anton Chekhov

Everything on earth is beautiful, everything -- except what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own human dignity.

Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.

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

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

People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.

Life is given only once, and one wants to live it boldly, with full conscious and beauty.

I will begin with what in my opinion is your lack of restraint. You are like a spectator in a theatre who expresses his enthusiasm so unrestrainedly that he prevents himself and others from hearing. That lack of restraint is particularly noticeable in the descriptions of nature with which you interrupt dialogues; when one reads them, these descriptions, one wishes they were more compact, shorter, say two or three lines.

An artist observes, selects, guesses, and synthesizes.

I swear fearfully at the conventions of the stage.

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

Write about this man who, drop by drop, squeezes the slave's blood out of himself until he wakes one day to find the blood of a real human being--not a slave's--coursing through his veins.

Art, especially the stage, is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling.

You've only got to begin to do anything to find out how few honest, honourable people there are. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think: "Oh Lord, you've given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants.

You will not become a saint through other people's sins.

My business is to be talented, that is, to be capable of selecting the important moments from the trivial ones. . . . It's about time for writers - particularly those who are genuine artists - to recognize that in this world you cannot figure out everything. Just have a writer who the crowds trust be courageous enough and declare that he does not understand everything, and that alone will represent a major contribution to the way people think, a long leap forward.

If our life has a meaning, an aim, it has nothing to do with our personal happiness, but something wiser and greater.

Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.

How unbearable at times are people who are happy, people for whom everything works out.

Passion must be concealed in a society where cold reserve and indifference are the signs of good breeding.

Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.

Better to perish from fools than to accept praises from them.