QuoteProject
This life of ours...human life is like a flower gloriously blooming in a meadow: along comes a goat, eats it up---no more flower.
Anton Chekhov
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Life is brief and can be interrupted unexpectedly.

Chekhov's quote reflects the fragility and transience of human life, comparing it to a flower that blooms beautifully but can be destroyed at any moment, much like how life can be abruptly cut short by unforeseen circumstances. It serves as a reminder to appreciate the beauty in life while acknowledging its impermanence.

Themes

LifeFragilityBeautyImpermanenceAppreciation

In practice

Example use cases

During a graduation speech to remind students to cherish every moment.

More from Anton Chekhov

If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.
Anton ChekhovRead
There are still many more days of failure ahead, whole seasons of failure, things will go terribly wrong, you will have huge disappointments , but you have to prepare for that, you have to expect it and be resolute and follow your own path.
Anton ChekhovRead
Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
Anton ChekhovRead
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.
Anton ChekhovRead
When you want to touch the reader's heart, try to be colder. It gives their grief as it were, a background, against which it stands out in greater relief.
Anton ChekhovRead
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?
Anton ChekhovRead

Similar quotes

If the human race develops an electronic nervous system, outside the bodies of individual people, thus giving us all one mind and one global body, this is almost precisely what has happened in the organization of cells which compose our own bodies. We have already done it. [...] If all this ends with the human race leaving no more trace of itself in the universe than a system of electronic patterns, why should that trouble us? For that is exactly what we are now!
Alan WattsRead
God doesn't ask that we succeed in everything, but that we are faithful. However beautiful our work may be, let us not become attached to it. Always remain prepared to give it up, without losing your peace.
Mother TeresaRead
The outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state...Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.
James AllenRead
In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.
Edgar Allan PoeRead
I know I was born and I know that I'll die... _x000D_ The in between is mine._x000D_ I Am Mine
Eddie VedderRead
There can be no tyrants where there are no slaves.
Jose RizalRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.