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)
There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.
Everything ought to be beautiful in a human being: face, and dress, and soul, and ideas.
The more we know, the less we believe.
I have no desire to show the world as it is; I want to show it as it should be.
A person's individuality is stronger than his or her social position.
The wise man finds everything ridiculous, the sensible man almost nothing.
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.
A writer must be as objective as a chemist.
If you are going to be depressed, don't be depressed in a half-hearted way. Be thoroughly depressed.
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.
It is not the one who does not know how to write that is a graphomaniac, but the one who cannot help writing.
Contemporaries of Anton Chekhov
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Anton Chekhov (1860–1904).