Quotes By Anton Chekhov

We learn about life not from plusses alone, but from minuses as well.

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

The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.

Man is what he believes.

If you cry 'forward', you must without fail make plain in what direction to go.

Reason and justice tell me there's more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism.

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

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

There is nothing new in art except talent.

People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about.

The University brings out all abilities, including incapability.

When you're thirsty and it seems that you could drink the entire ocean that's faith; when you start to drink and finish only a glass or two that's science.

The sea has neither meaning nor pity.

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

A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.

To advise is not to compel.

When a woman isn't beautiful, people always say, 'You have lovely eyes, you have lovely hair.'

Advertising is the very essence of democracy.

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

Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric.

All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart stands still.

No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith.

I promise to be an excellent husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, will not appear every day in my sky.

To judge between good or bad, between successful and unsuccessful would take the eye of a God.

Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.

When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can't be cured.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

A fiance is neither this nor that: he's left one shore, but not yet reached the other.

Only entropy comes easy.