“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, quote from Stories
“Renown does not allure you now. What is there flattering, amusing, or edifying in their carving your name on a tombstone, then time rubbing off the inscription together with the gilding? Moreover, happily there are too many of you for the weak memory of mankind to be able to retain your names.” “Of”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Stories
“There is always, for some reason, an element of sadness mingled with my thoughts of human happiness, and, on this occasion, at the sight of a happy man I was overcome by an oppressive feeling that was close upon despair. It was particularly oppressive at night. A bed was made up for me in the room next to my brother’s bedroom, and I could hear that he was awake, and that he kept getting up and going to the plate of gooseberries and taking one. I reflected how many satisfied, happy people there really are! ‘What a suffocating force it is! You look at life: the insolence and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and brutishness of the weak, incredible poverty all about us, overcrowding, degeneration, drunkenness, hypocrisy, lying... Yet all is calm and stillness in the houses and in the streets; of the fifty thousand living in a town, there is not one who would cry out, who would give vent to his indignation aloud. We see the people going to market for provisions, eating by day, sleeping by night, talking their silly nonsense, getting married, growing old, serenely escorting their dead to the cemetery; but we do not see and we do not hear those who suffer, and what is terrible in life goes on somewhere behind the scenes... Everything is quiet and peaceful, and nothing protests but mute statistics: so many people gone out of their minds, so many gallons of vodka drunk, so many children dead from malnutrition... And this order of things is evidently necessary; evidently the happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burdens in silence, and without that silence happiness would be impossible. It’s a case of general hypnotism. There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him—disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others. But there is no man with a hammer; the happy man lives at his ease, and trivial daily cares faintly agitate him like the wind in the aspen-tree—and all goes well.”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Stories
“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, quote from Stories
“El polizonte era capaz de anonadarlo, a fuerza de denuncias. Por ejemplo, vería a tu gato vagabundeando y te denunciaría por dejar tus animales errantes...;”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Stories
“¡La instrucción, cuando va unida a la pobreza, es testimonio de elevadas cualidades del alma!... ¡Mal”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Stories
“No he probado la ejecución ni la reclusión perpetua, pero si se puede juzgar a priori, la pena de muerte, a mi juicio, es más moral y humana que la reclusión. La ejecución mata de golpe, mientras que la reclusión vitalicia lo hace lentamente. ¿Cuál de los verdugos es más humano? ¿El que lo mata a usted en pocos minutos o el que le quita la vida durante muchos años?”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Stories
“«La gobernanta es la única persona que se encuentra bien en este lugar y la fábrica sólo trabaja para satisfacerla. Pero eso no pasa de ser una ilusión, ella no es más que un testaferro. El personaje principal para el que todo el mundo trabaja aquí es el diablo».”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Stories
“Es por ello por lo que algunos amigos le acusaron de no conocer «a fondo» a sus personajes, a lo que él replicó que «sólo los imbéciles creen saberlo todo». El”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Stories
“Lo más turbador de esos personajes es que saben perfectamente lo que deben hacer y sin embargo no lo hacen; también sorprende que estén derrotados de antemano, que parezcan conocer el resultado frustrado de sus gestiones o afanes, que no concedan la menor opción a la esperanza. Terratenientes”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Stories
“—¿Qué cuadro es ése? —preguntó el estudiante. —Psiquis.”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Stories
“si se para uno a pensarlo, todo es bello en este mundo, salvo lo que nosotros mismos discurrimos y hacemos cuando olvidamos los fines supremos de la existencia y nuestra dignidad humana.”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Stories
Anton Chekhov
Born place: in Taganrog, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire
Born date January 29, 1860
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“Kane..." she hesitated. "I lied to you last night."
His green eyes searched her face. "What did you lie about?"
"When I said... when I said I didn't want to kiss you again." Her breath came out in an unsteady puff. "I lied.”
― Elle Kennedy, quote from Midnight Rescue
“I know I have been happiest at your side;
But what is done, is done, and all’s to be.
And small the good, to linger dolefully-
Gayly it lived, and gallantly it died.
I will not make you songs of hearts denied,
And you, being man, would have no tears of me,
And should I offer you fidelity,
You’d be, I think, a little terrified.
Yet this the need of woman, this her curse:
To range her little gifts, and give, and give,
Because the throb of giving’s sweet to bear.
To you, who never begged me vows or verse,
My gift shall be my absence, while I live;
But after that, my dear, I cannot swear.”
― Dorothy Parker, quote from The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker
“There were so many of these moments that could never be captured accurately, even in the camcorder, only in the heart.”
― Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, quote from Now I'll Tell You Everything
“The moment my son died my own heartbeat turned against me”
― Alex London, quote from Guardian
“But it would be broadcast, and in the great public theatre of his age; that unregulated market of braying narcissists, that Wild West of disinformation and fraud, that infinite sea of piracy, the great electorate where the constituency of billions voted their approval with a click of a mouse. The internet. It brought governments down and rewrote history...”
― Adam Nevill, quote from Last Days
The Philosopher and...
The Passenger
Dead by Morning
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