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
It's not a matter of old or new forms; a person writes without thinking about any forms, he writes because it flows freely from his soul.
When a person expends the least amount of motion on one action, that is grace.
It's worth living abroad to study up on genteel and delicate manners. The maid smiles continuously; she smiles like a duchess on a stage, while at the same time it is clear from her face that she is exhausted from overwork.
Can words such as Orthodox, Jew, or Catholic really express some sort of exclusive personal virtues or merits?
In general, Russia suffers from a frightening poverty in the sphere of facts and a frightening wealth of all types of arguments.
In one-act pieces there should be only rubbish that is their strength.
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.
In Western Europe people perish from the congestion and stifling closeness, but with us it is from the spaciousness.... The expanses are so great that the little man hasn't the resources to orient himself.... This is what I think about Russian suicides.
By nature servile, people attempt at first glance to find signs of good breeding in the appearance of those who occupy more exalted stations.
We live not in order to eat, but in order not to know what we feel like eating.
[Ognev] recalled endless, heated, purely Russian arguments, when the wranglers, spraying spittle and banging their fists on the table, fail to understand yet interrupt one another, themselves not even noticing it, contradict themselves with every phrase, change the subject, then, having argued for two or three hours, begin to laugh.
Moscow is a city that has much suffering ahead of it.
Death can only be profitable: there's no need to eat, drink, pay taxes, offend people, and since a person lies in a grave for hundreds or thousands of years, if you count it up the profit turns out to be enormous.
Each of us is full of too many wheels, screws and valves to permit us to judge one another on a first impression or by two or three external signs.