Quotes from Anton Chekhov

Men are made for happiness, and anyone who is completely happy has a right to say to himself: "I am doing God's will on earth."

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.

Medicine is my lawful wife. Literature is my mistress.

Man is what he believes.

Conciseness is the sister of talent.

Posterity will say as usual: "In the past things were better, the present is worse than the past."

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying . . . one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story.

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.

Wisdom.... comes not from age, but from education and learning.

There are people whom even children's literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon.

Solomon made a big mistake when he asked for wisdom.

I've noticed that people who get married cease to be curious.

If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.

If you fear loneliness, then don't get married.

A man and a woman marry because both of them don't know what to do with themselves.

A man and a woman marry because both of them do not know what to do with themselves.

Satiation, like any state of vitality, always contains a degree of impudence, and that impudence emerges first and foremost when the sated man instructs the hungry one.

The personal life of every individual is based on secrecy, and perhaps it is partly for that reason that civilized man is so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.

Life is a vexatious trap; when a thinking man reaches maturity and attains to full consciousness he cannot help feeling that he is in a trap from which there is no escape.

To harbor spiteful feelings against ordinary people for not being heroes is possible only for narrow-minded or embittered man.

No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand... Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing.

Man will become better when you show him what he is like.

In countries where there is a mild climate, less effort is expended on the struggle with nature and man is kinder and more gentle.

Do you remember you shot a seagull? A man came by chance, saw it and destroyed it, just to pass the time.