Quotes from The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

“He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people.”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

“And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

“He always seemed to women different from what he was, and they loved in him not himself, but the man created by their imagination, whom they had been eagerly seeking all their lives; and afterwards, when they noticed their mistake, they loved him all the same.”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

“Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it—just as though one were in a madhouse or prison.”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

“My thoughts about human happiness, for some peculiar reason, had always been tinged with a certain sadness.”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

“The leaves did not stir on the trees, cicadas twanged, and the monotonous muffled sound of the sea that rose from below spoke of the peace, the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it rumbled below when there was no Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it rumbles now, and it will rumble as indifferently and as hollowly when we are no more. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies, perhaps a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing advance of life upon earth, of unceasing movement towards perfection. Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so lovely, Gurov, soothed and spellbound by these magical surroundings - the sea, the mountains, the clouds, the wide sky - thought how everything is really beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget the higher aims of life and our own human dignity.”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

“At Oreanda they sat on a beach not far from the church, looked down at the sea, and were silent. Yalta was barely visible through the morning mist; white clouds rested motionlessly on the mountaintops. The leaves did not stir on the trees, cicadas twanged, and the monotonous muffled sound of the sea that rose from below spoke of the peace, the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it rumbled below when there was no Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it rumbles now, and it will rumble as indifferently and as hollowly when we are no more. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing advance of life upon earth, of unceasing movement towards perfection.”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

“And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection.”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

“It's obvious that the happy man feels contented only because the unhappy ones bear their burden without saying a word: if it weren't for their silence, happiness would be quiet impossible. It's a kind of mass hypnosis”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

“Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so lovely, soothed and spellbound in these magical surroundings—the sea, mountains, clouds, the open sky—Gurov thought how in reality everything is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence.”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

“Loud voices were heard from upstairs. "Madame Kushkin is in a fit, most likely, or else she has”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

“She could not speak; she was crying. She turned away from him, and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. "Let her have her cry out. I'll sit down and wait," he thought, and he sat down in an arm-chair. Then he rang and asked for tea to be brought him, and while he drank his tea she remained standing at the window with her back to him.”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

“Repeated – and in fact bitter – experience had long taught him that every affair, which at first adds spice and variety to life and seems such a charming, light-hearted adventure, inevitably develops into an enormous, extraordinarily complex problem with respectable people – especially Muscovites, who are so hesitant, so inhibited – until finally the whole situation becomes a real nightmare”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904

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“Land and sea.
We may think of them as opposites; as complements. But there is a difference in how we think of them; the sea, and the land.
If we are walking around in a forest, a meadow or a town, we see our surroundings as being made up of individual elements. There are many different kinds of trees in varying sizes, those buildings, these streets. The meadow, the flowers, the bushes. Our gaze lingers on details, and if we are standing in a forest in the autumn, we become tongue-tied if we try to describe the richness around us. All this exists on land.
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