Anton P. Chekhov

Chekhov's Quotes "I am afraid of those who will look for tendenciousness between the lines and who are determined to see me either as a liberal or a conservative. I am neither a liberal nor a conservative, neither a gradualist nor a monk nor an indifferentist. I would like to be nothing more than a free artist, and I regret that God did not give me the gift to be one. I hate falseness and coercion in all their forms . . . . Pharisaism, stupidity and arbitrariness reign not merely in merchants' houses and police stations: I see them in science, in literature, among the young. That is why I have no particular passion for either policemen or butchers or scientists or writers or the young. I consider brand-names and labels a prejudice. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and absolute freedom, freedom from force and falseness in whatever form they express themselves. That's the platform I'd subscribe to if I were a great artist." You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible. To judge between good and bad, between successful and unsuccessful would take the eye of a god. The university brings out all abilities including incapability. A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer. He is a man who has signed a contract with his conscious and his sense of duty. When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can't be cured. One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making a mistake. The more refined one is, the more unhappy. Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out. If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry. Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something. The personal life of every individual is based on secrecy, and perhaps it is partly for that reason that civilised man is so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected. No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand.... Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing. ...only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things. If you cry "forward," you must without fail make plain in what direction to go.