Anton Chekhov

Reason and justice tell me there's more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism.

We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.

You must trust and believe in people, or life becomes impossible.

If you are afraid of loneliness do not marry.

If you cry 'forward' you must without fail make plain in what direction to go.

How unbearable at times are people who are happy people for whom everything works out.

Doctors are just the same as lawyers, the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.

Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness and only what is useless is pleasurable.

When an actor has money he doesn't send letters he sends telegrams.

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.

Advertising is the very essence of democracy.

A writer is not a confectioner a cosmetic dealer or an entertainer.

The more refined one is the more unhappy.

The sea has neither meaning nor pity.

No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand... Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing.

When a woman isn't beautiful people always say 'You have lovely eyes you have lovely hair.'

No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith.

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress, when I get tired of one I spend the night with the other.

There is nothing new in art except talent.

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.

Doctors are the same as lawyers, the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.

A fiance is neither this nor that: he's left one shore but not yet reached the other.

I promise to be an excellent husband but give me a wife who like the moon will not appear every day in my sky.

To judge between good or bad between successful and unsuccessful would take the eye of a God.

The world perishes not from bandits and fires but from hatred hostility and all these petty squabbles.

People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about.

To advise is not to compel.

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.

We learn about life not from plusses alone but from minuses as well.

Only entropy comes easy.

Don't tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass.

The only difference between doctors and lawyers is that lawyers merely rob you whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.

It's easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.

One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making a mistake.

Man is what he believes.

Money like vodka turns a person into an eccentric.

Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is in fact a talent: you must be born with it.

Love friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.

The University brings out all abilities including incapability.

The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on, science and art are as well.

The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others.

People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.

When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease that means it can't be cured.