Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short story writer who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth29 January 1860
CityTaganrog, Russia
CountryRussian Federation
The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can't return even if it wants to.
It is not only the prisoners who grow coarse and hardened from corporal punishment, but those as well who perpetrate the act or are present to witness it.
Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric.
To advise is not to compel.
A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.
We go to great pains to alter life for the happiness of our descendants and our descendants will say as usual: things used to be so much better, life today is worse than it used to be.
It's easier to ask for money from the poor than from the wealthy.
The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others.
You ask me what life is. That's like asking what a carrot is. A carrot is a carrot, and there's nothing more to know.
Man is what he believes.
An enormously vast field lies between "God exists" and "there is no God." The truly wise man traverses it with great difficulty. A Russian knows one or the other of these two extremes, but is not interested in the middle ground. He usually knows nothing, or very little.
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.
If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.
Death is terrifying, but it would be even more terrifying to find out that you are going to live forever and never die.