Anton Chekhov

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

Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric.

There is nothing new in art except talent.

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

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.

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

You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The sea has neither meaning nor pity.

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

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

If Makar Denisych was just a clerk or a junior manager, then no one would have dared talk to him in such a condescending, casual tone, but he is a 'writer', and a talentless mediocrity! returned a bad story to Makar recently is know to the whole district and has provoked mockery, long conversations and indignation, while Makar Denisych is already being referred to as old Makarka. If someone does not write the way required, they never try to explain what is wrong, but just say: 'That bastard has gone and written another load of rubbish!

Lebedev: ...There'll be a scandal, the tongues of the whole district will buzz with gossip, but it's better to go through a scandal, isn't it, than to destroy yourself for your whole life.