"If in the first act you introduce a gun, by the third act you have to use it."
Read quote
15 likes
Quote collection
Anton Chekhov quotes (page 8 of 22)
433 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"There are still many more days of failure ahead, whole seasons of failure, things will go terribly wrong, you will have huge disappointments , but you have to prepare for that, you have to expect it and be resolute and follow your own path."
Read quote
14 likes
"The bourgeoisie is very fond of so-called practical types and novels with happy endings, since they soothe it with the idea that one can both accumulate capital and preserve innocence, be a beast and at the same time be happy..."
Read quote
14 likes
"This life of ours...human life is like a flower gloriously blooming in a meadow: along comes a goat, eats it up---no more flower."
Read quote
14 likes
"Not one of our mortal gauges is suitable for evaluating non-existence, for making judgments about that which is not a person."
Read quote
14 likes
"He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people."
Read quote
14 likes
"These people have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and wild herbs."
Read quote
14 likes
"For the salvation of his soul the Muslim digs a well. It would be a fine thing if each of us were to leave behind a school, or a well, or something of the sort, so that life would not pass by and retreat into eternity without a trace."
Read quote
14 likes
"When you describe the miserable and unfortunate, and want to make the reader feel pity, try to be somewhat colder - that seems to give a kind of background to another's grief, against which it stands out more clearly. Whereas in your story the characters cry and you sigh. Yes, be more cold. ... The more objective you are, the stronger will be the impression you make."
Read quote
14 likes
"You've only got to begin to do anything to find out how few honest, honourable people there are. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think: "Oh Lord, you've given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants."
Read quote
14 likes
"Even while lying, you'll be believed if you speak with authority."
Read quote
14 likes
"If our life has a meaning, an aim, it has nothing to do with our personal happiness, but something wiser and greater."
Read quote
13 likes
"Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another."
Read quote
13 likes
"If ever my life can be of any use to you, come and claim it."
Read quote
13 likes
"There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined."
Read quote
13 likes
"Only one who loves can remember so well."
Read quote
13 likes
"Do you see that tree? It is dead but it still sways in the wind with the others. I think it would be like that with me. That if I died I would still be part of life in one way or another."
Read quote
13 likes
"There is nothing new in art except talent."
Read quote
13 likes
"An expansive life, one not constrained by four walls, requires as well an expansive pocket."
Read quote
13 likes
"Silence accompanies the most significant expressions of happiness and unhappiness: those in love understand one another best when silent, while the most heated and impassioned speech at a graveside touches only outsiders, but seems cold and inconsequential to the widow and children of the deceased."
Read quote
13 likes