Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov Quotes

“They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“Only one who loves can remember so well.”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“Formerly, when I would feel a desire to understand someone, or myself, I would take into consideration not actions, in which everything is relative, but wishes. Tell me what you want and I'll tell you who you are.”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“To harbor spiteful feelings against ordinary people for not being heroes is possible only for narrow-minded or embittered man.”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“Every happy man should have some one with a little hammer at his door to knock and remind him that there are unhappy people, and that, however happy he may be, life will sooner or later show its claws, and some misfortune will befall him -- illness, poverty, loss, and then no one will see or hear him, just as he now neither sees nor hears others. But there is no man with a hammer, and the happy go on living, just a little fluttered with the petty cares of every day, like an aspen-tree in the wind -- and everything is all right.”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“وفكر كل منهما لااراديا فى ان حياة الانسان و سعادته رهن بالصدف و الاشياء التافهة , الضئيلة فيما يبدو , و التى لا تساوى كما يقال , شروى نقير , و خيمت الكآبة و الحزن عليهم جميعا.”
― Anton Chekhov, الأعمال المختارة - المجلد الأول - الأعمال القصصية

“إنك لا تحب أقربائك إلى هذه الدرجة إلا عندما تواجه بخطر فقدانهم”
― Anton Chekhov, الأعمال المختارة - المجلد الأول - الأعمال القصصية

“In short, the man displayed a constant and insurmountable impulse to wrap himself in a covering, to make himself, so to speak, a case which would isolate him and protect him from external influences. Reality irritated him, frightened him, kept him in continual agitation, and, perhaps to justify his timidity, his aversion for the actual, he always praised the past and what had never existed; and even the classical languages which he taught were in reality for him goloshes and umbrellas in which he sheltered himself from real life.”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“The proudest, the most independent of women, if I can but succeed in communicating my passion to her, will follow me unreasoningly, unquestioningly, doing all I desire. Out of a nun I once made a nihilist who, I heard later, shot a policeman. In all my wanderings my wife never left me for an instant, and, like a weathercock, changed her faith with each of my changing passions.

- On the Way”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“كانت على الدوام تُحب أحداً ما، ولا تستطيع أن تعيش من دون ذلك. في الماضي أحبت أباها الذي أصبح يجلس الآن مريضاً في مقعد، في غرفة مُظلمة، ويتنفس بصعوبة. وأحبت خالتها التي كانت تأتي من بريانسك أحياناً، مرة كل عامين. وقبل ذلك، عندما كانت تدرس في المدرسة المتوسطة، أحبت مدرس اللغة الفرنسية. كانت آنسة هادئة، طيّبة حنوناً، بنظرة وديعة ناعمة، وفي غاية الصحة. وعندما ينظر الرجال إلى خديّها الممتلئين المتورديّن، وإلى عنقها الأبيض الناعم ذي الشامة الداكنة، وإلى ابتسامتها الطيّبة الساذجة التي ترتسم على وجهها عندما تسمع شيئاً سارّا��، كانوا يفكرون: "نعم، لا بأس بها.." ويبتسمون هم أيضاً، أما النساء فلا يتمالكن أنفسهن في أثناء الحديث من الإمساك بيدها والقول في غمرة السرور: يا حبّوبة!”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“The student thought again that if Vasilisa wept and her daughter was troubled, then obviously what he had just told them, something that had taken place nineteen centuries ago, had a relation to the present––to both women, and probably to this desolate village, to himself, to all people. . .The past, he thought, is connected with the present in an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of the other. And it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain: he touched one end, and the other moved.

- The Student”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“أنت تعرفين أن الفلاح إذا ما وهب نفسه للصيد أو الخيل فعلى المحراث السلام . وإذا تقمصت الإنسان روح الحرية فلن يستطيع أحد إخراجها منه .”
― Anton Chekhov, الأعمال المختارة - المجلد الأول - الأعمال القصصية

“Except for two or three older writers, all modern literature seems to me not literature but some sort of handicraft, which exists only so as to be encouraged, though one is reluctant to use its products.”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“Hundreds of versts of desolate, monotonous, sun-parched steppe cannot bring on the depression induced by one man who sits and talks, and gives no sign of ever going.”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“Podtyagin considers whether to take offence or not -- and decides to take offence.”
― Anton Chekhov, Short Stories

“Not to sleep during the night means to be aware every moment of your abnormality, and therefore I wait impatiently for morning and daylight, when I have the right not to sleep.”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories

“Purity and virtue scarcely differ from vice, if they're not free of malice”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“Ieronym took hold of the cable with both hands, curved himself into a question mark, and grunted. The ferry creaked and lurched. The silhouette of the peasant in the tall hat slowly began to recede from me--which meant that the ferry was moving. Soon Ieronym straightened up and began working with one hand. We were silent and looked at the bank towards which we were now moving. There the "lumination" which the peasant had been waiting for was already beginning. At the water's edge, barrels of pitch blazed like huge bonfires. Their reflection, crimson as the rising moon, crept to meet us in long, wide stripes. The burning barrels threw light on their own smoke and on the long human shadows that flitted about the fire; but further to the sides and behind them, where the velvet ringing rushed from, was the same impenetrable darkness. Suddenly slashing it open, the golden ribbon of a rocket soared skywards; it described an arc and, as if shattering against the sky, burst and came sifting down in sparks. On the bank a noise was heard resembling a distant "hoorah."

"How beautiful," I said.

"It's even impossible to say how beautiful!" sighed Ieronym. "It's that kind of night, sir! At other times you don't pay attention to rockets, but now any vain thing makes you glad. Where are you from?”
― Anton Chekhov, Short Stories

“I'm not saying that French books are talented, and intelligent, and noble. They don't satisfy me either. But they're less boring than the Russian ones, and not seldom one finds in them the main element of creative work––a sense of personal freedom, which Russian authors don't have. I can't remember a single new book in which the author doesn't do his best, from the very first page, to entangle himself in all possible conventions and private deals with his conscience. One is afraid to speak of the naked body, another is bound hand and foot by psychological analysis, a third must have "a warm attitude towards humanity," a fourth purposely wallows for whole pages in descriptions of nature, lest he be suspected of tendentiousness... One insists on being a bourgeois in his work, another an aristocrat, etc. Contrivance, caution, keeping one's own counsel, but no freedom nor courage to write as one wishes, and therefore no creativity.

- A Boring Story”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“At the water's edge, barrels of pitch blazed like huge bonfires. Their reflection, crimson as the rising moon, crept to meet us in long, wide stripes. The burning barrels threw light on their own smoke and on the long human shadows that flitted about the fire; but further to the sides and behind them, where the velvet ringing rushed from, was the same impenetrable darkness. Suddenly slashing it open, the golden ribbon of a rocket soared skywards; it described an arc and, as if shattering against the sky, burst and came sifting down in sparks.

- Easter Night”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“يا لها من لحظات سعيدة! ولكن ليس هناك شيء سعيد بصورة مطلقة في هذه الحياة الدنيوية. قالشيء السعيد عادةً يحمل في طيّاته السم ، أ, يسمممه شيء ما خارجي.”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“If I were to be asked: What now constitutes the main and fundamental feature of your existence? I would answer: Insomnia.”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories

“It’s the correct thing to say that a man needs no more than six feet of earth. But six feet is what a corpse needs, not a man. And they say, too, now, that if our intellectual classes are attracted to the land and yearn for a farm, it’s a good thing. But these farms are just the same as six feet of earth. To retreat from town, from the struggle, from the bustle of life, to retreat and bury oneself in one’s farm—it’s not life, it’s egoism, laziness, it’s monasticism of a sort, but monasticism without good works. A man does not need six feet of earth or a farm, but the whole globe, all nature, where he can have room to display all the qualities and peculiarities of his free spirit.”
― Anton Chekhov, Stories

“My life is dull, heavy, monotonous, because I'm an artist, a strange man, from my youth I've been chafed by jealousy, dissatisfaction with myself, lack of faith in what I'm doing, I'm always poor, I'm a vagabond, but you, you're a healthy, normal person, a landowner, a squire––they do you live so uninterestingly, why do you take so little from life? Why, for instance, haven't you fallen in love with Lida or Zhenya yet?

- The House with the Mezzanine”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“You're not content in your position as a factory owner and a rich heiress, you don't believe in your right to it, and now you can't sleep, which, of course, is certainly better than if you were content, slept soundly, and thought everything was fine. Your insomnia is respectable; in any event, it's a good sign. In fact, for our parents such a conversation as we're having now would have been unthinkable; they didn't talk at night, they slept soundly, but we, our generation, sleep badly, are anguished, talk a lot, and keep trying to decide if we're right or not.

- A Medical Case”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“يينبغي أن يكون الدواء حلوا ، والحقيقة جميلة”
― Anton Chekhov, الأعمال المختارة - المجلد الأول - الأعمال القصصية

“ولكنها شعرت الآن ، بعد الأوبرا ، برغبة في التشكك في ذلك الحب. أن تكون غير محبوبة وتعيسة.. ما أروع ذلك! ثمة شئ ما ، حين يحب الشخص بقوة ولا يكترث به الآخر ، شئ جميل ، ومؤثر ، وشاعري .”
― Anton Chekhov, الأعمال المختارة - المجلد الأول - الأعمال القصصية

“Why does this forever gone, irretrievable time, why does it seem brighter, more festive and rich, than it was in reality?”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“—Vengo a pedirle a usted un favor —le dijo a Klochkov—. ¿Tendría usted la bondad de prestarme, por un par de horas, a su gentil amiga?”
― Anton Chekhov, Cuentos de Chejóv

“You see and hear that they lie,” said Ivan Ivanovitch, turning over on the other side, “and they call you a fool for putting up with their lying. You endure insult and humiliation, and dare not openly say that you are on the side of the honest and the free, and you lie and smile yourself; and all that for the sake of a crust of bread, for the sake of a warm corner, for the sake of a wretched little worthless rank in the service. No, one can’t go on living like this.”
― Anton Chekhov, Stories