Anton Chekhov
Master of the short story and modern drama
Most quoted
"Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he has been given. But up to now he has not created, but only destroyed. Forests are disappearing, rivers are drying up, wildlife is becoming extinct, the climate is spoiled, and every day the earth is growing poorer and uglier."
— from Uncle Vanya, 1897
"If you want to be a pessimist and write a novel, you must be a pessimist and write a novel. If you want to be an optimist and write a novel, you must be an optimist and write a novel. But if you want to be a realist and write a novel, you must be a realist and write a novel."
— from Letters
"The people I am afraid of are the ones who look for tendentiousness between the lines and are determined to see me as either liberal or conservative. I am not a liberal, not a conservative... I should have liked to be a free artist and that's all."
— from Letter to A.S. Suvorin, 1888
All quotes by Anton Chekhov (291)
A good man is a good man, whether he is rich or poor.
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't going away.
The most important thing is to be able to sacrifice yourself for others.
We live in a time when there is no truth, only opinions.
The human soul is a dark forest. It is not easy to find your way in it.
We are all actors in the great drama of life.
Life is a continuous process of dying.
The highest good is to live in harmony with nature.
The world is full of suffering, but it is also full of the overcoming of it.
What is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms.
The true beauty of life lies in its transience.
The meaning of life is not to be found in any one thing, but in the sum of all things.
The only way to overcome death is to live a life that is truly meaningful.
If you want to be a pessimist and write a novel, you must be a pessimist and write a novel. If you want to be an optimist and write a novel, you must be an optimist and write a novel. But if you want to be a realist and write a novel, you must be a realist and write a novel.
The aim of art is to present a problem, not to solve it.
Love, friendship, respect, admiration, these are the things that make a life rich. Without them, it is a poor thing.
The only way to be happy is to love what you do.
The world is a beautiful place, and it's worth fighting for.
The artist's task is to ask questions, not to answer them.
Contemporaries of Anton Chekhov
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Anton Chekhov (1860–1904).