"People understand God as the expression of the most lofty morality. Maybe He needs only perfect people."
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Quote collection
Anton Chekhov quotes (page 15 of 22)
433 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"If you cry ''Forward'' you must be sure to make clear the direction in which to go. Don't you see that if you fail to do that and simply call out the word to a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions?"
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"Anna Petrovna: Never talk to women about your own good qualities. Let them find out for themselves."
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"Every person lives his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy."
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"To judge between good or bad, between successful and unsuccessful would take the eye of a God."
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"In my opinion it is harmful to place important things in the hands of philanthropy, which in Russia is marked by a chance character. Nor should important matters depend on leftovers, which are never there. I would prefer that the government treasury take care of it."
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"If only one tooth aches, rejoice that not all of them ache.... If your wife betrays you, be glad that she betrayed only you and not the nation."
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"Death is terrifying, but it would be even more terrifying to find out that you are going to live forever and never die."
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"He who doesn't know how to be a servant should never be allowed to be a master; the interests of public life are alien to anyone who is unable to enjoy others' successes, and such a person should never be entrusted with public affairs."
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"A man who doesn't drink is not, in my opinion, fully a man."
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"But at the same time, in reality, what a difference there is between the world today, and what it used to be! And with the passage of more time, some two or three hundred years, say, people will look back at our own times with horror, or with sneering laughter, because all of our present day life will appear so clumsy, and burdensome, extraordinarily inept and strange. Yes, certainly, what a life it will be then, what a life!"
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"My business is to be talented, that is, to be capable of selecting the important moments from the trivial ones. . . . It's about time for writers - particularly those who are genuine artists - to recognize that in this world you cannot figure out everything. Just have a writer who the crowds trust be courageous enough and declare that he does not understand everything, and that alone will represent a major contribution to the way people think, a long leap forward."
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"Everyone judges plays as if they were very easy to write. They don't know that it is hard to write a good play, and twice as hardand tortuous to write a bad one."
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"The stupider the peasant, the better the horse understands him."
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"It's immoral to steal, but you can take things."
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"Once a man gets a fixed idea, there's nothing to be done."
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"Not everyone knows how to be silent or to leave in good time. It happens that even people of good breeding fail to notice that their presence provokes in the weary or preoccupied host a feeling akin to hatred, and that this feeling is tensely concealed and covered up with lies."
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"The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on; science and art are as well."
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"Nothing better forges a bond of love, friendship or respect than common hatred toward something."
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"In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you'll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball."
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