Anton Chekhov Quotes About Literature
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Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.
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It's easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.
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Is it our job to judge? The gendarme, policemen and bureaucrats have been especially prepared by fate for that job. Our job is towrite, and only to write.
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To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards.
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Pharisaism, obtuseness and tyranny reign not only in the homes of merchants and in jails; I see it in science, in literature, and among youth. I consider any emblem or label a prejudice.... My holy of holies is the human body, health, intellect, talent, inspiration, love and the most absolute of freedoms, the freedom from force and falsity in whatever forms they might appear.
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Reason and justice tell me there's more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism.
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There are people whom even children's literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon.
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When a woman isn't beautiful, people always say, 'You have lovely eyes, you have lovely hair.'
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There is nothing new in art except talent.
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I am writing a play which I probably will not finish until the end of November. I am writing it with considerable pleasure, though I sin frightfully against the conventions of the stage. It is a comedy with three female parts, six male, four acts, a landscape (view of the lake), lots of talk on literature, little action and tons of love.
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I don't like being successful; the subjects which sit in my head are annoyed and jealous of what has already been written.
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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...
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When all is said and done, no literature can outdo the cynicism of real life; you won't intoxicate with one glass someone who has already drunk up a whole barrel.
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But if you had asked him what his work was, he would look candidly and openly at you with his large bright eyes through his gold pincenez, and would answer in a soft, velvety, lisping baritone: "My work is literature."
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The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.
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Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.
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In my head there is a whole army of people asking to be let out and waiting for the word of command.
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When an actor has money he doesn't send letters, he sends telegrams.
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A good upbringing means not that you won't spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won't notice it when someone else does.
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Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric.
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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.
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I feel more confident and more satisfied when I reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it's disorderly it's not so dull, and besides, neither really loses anything, through my infidelity.
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Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.
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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.
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The University brings out all abilities, including incapability.
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Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.
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No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand... Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing.
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We learn about life not from plusses alone, but from minuses as well.
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I agree that one can't dispense with the reins and the whip altogether, for knaves find their way even into literature, but no thinking will discover a better police for literature than the critics and the author's own conscience.
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