Quotes By Anton Chekhov

If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.

It's easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.

The only difference between doctors and lawyers is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you, too.

The more refined one is, the more unhappy.

The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on; science and art are as well.

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

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

Man is what he believes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The sea has neither meaning nor pity.

To advise is not to compel.

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

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

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

Advertising is the very essence of democracy.

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.

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

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.