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
Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
Interpretation
Common hatred can bind people together more effectively than love or friendship.
This quote by Anton Chekhov highlights the paradoxical nature of human relationships, suggesting that negative emotions like hatred can create stronger bonds among individuals than positive feelings such as love and friendship. It implies that when people share a common adversary or disdain for something, their unity is fortified, even if it's based on negativity rather than mutual respect or affection.
In practice
This quote could resonate during a discussion about social movements that unite people against a common cause.
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.
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.
Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
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.
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.
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?
Forgiveness does not mean that we have to continue to relate to those who have done us harm. In some cases the best practice may be to end our connection, to never speak to or be with a harmful person again. Sometimes in the process of forgiveness a person who hurts or betrayed us may wish to make amends, but even this does not require us to put ourselves in the way of further harm.
Every human walks around with a certain kind of sadness. They may not wear it on their sleeves, but it's there if you look deep.
Language, identity, place, home: these are all of a piece - just different elements of belonging and not-belonging.
. . . owning a dog always ended with this sadness because dogs just don't live as long as people do.
Earnsha was not to be civilized with a wish, and my young lady was no philosopher, and no paragon of patience; but both their minds tending to the same point - one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed - they contrived in the end to reach it.
Human beings are natural mimickers. The more youre conscious of the other sides posture, mannerisms, and word choices - and the more you subtly reflect those back - the more accurate youll be at taking their perspective.
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