Ioannis Williams > Ioannis's Quotes

“We are accustomed to live in hopes of good weather, a good harvest, a nice love-affair, hopes of becoming rich or getting the office of chief of police, but I've never noticed anyone hoping to get wiser. We say to ourselves: it'll be better under a new tsar, and in two hundred years it'll still be better, and nobody tries to make this good time come tomorrow. On the whole, life gets more and more complex every day and moves on its own sweet will, and people get more and more stupid, and get isolated from life in ever-increasing numbers.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.”
― Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

“If you want to work on your art, work on your life.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions."

(Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)”
― Anton Chekhov

“Do silly things. Foolishness is a great deal more vital and healthy than our straining and striving after a meaningful life.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Portable Chekhov

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

“When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it cannot be cured.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and when he dies only the five senses that we know perish with him, and the other ninety-five remain alive.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

“Any idiot can face a crisis; it's this day-to-day living that wears you out.”
― Anton Chekhov

“The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.”
― Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

“What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.”
― A.P. Chekhov

“When asked, "Why do you always wear black?", he said, "I am mourning for my life.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Wisdom.... comes not from age, but from education and learning.”
― Anton Chekhov

“If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry.”
― Anton Chekhov, Notebook of Anton Chekhov

“Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress. When I get fed up with one, I spend the night with the other”
― Anton Chekhov

“Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Man is what he believes.”
― Anton Chekhov

“There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and simplicity in our interactions. Be rude when you’re angry, laugh when something is funny, and answer when you’re asked.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?”
― Anton Chekhov, The Complete Short Novels

“To fear love is to fear life, and those whose fear life are already three parts dead...”
― Anton Chekhov

“The happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burden in silence. Without this silence, happiness would be impossible.”
― Anton Chekhov

“The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.”
― Chekhov, Anton Chekhov, Anton

“There are a great many opinions in this world, and a good half of them are professed by people who have never been in trouble."

(The Mill)”
― Anton Chekhov, The Portable Chekhov

“And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.”
― Anton Chekhov

“These people have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and wild herbs.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Man will become better when you show him what he is like.”
― Anton Chekhov

“I was oppressed with a sense of vague discontent and dissatisfaction with my own life, which was passing so quickly and uninterestingly, and I kept thinking it would be a good thing if I could tear my heart out of my breast, that heart which had grown so weary of life.”
― Anton Chekhov

“I should think I'm going to be a perpetual student.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

“And what does it mean -- dying? Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and only the five we know are lost at death, while the other ninety-five remain alive.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard