Anton Chekhov

"One should not go to sick people and old women for miracles. Is not health a miracle? And life itself? A miracle is something incomprehensible."

'Look, I don't care a straw for life, but I am living!'

The predominance of reason over the heart is simply overwhelming amongst us. Direct feeling, inspiration--everything is choked by petty analysis. Where there is reasonableness there is coldness, and cold people--it's no use to disguise it--know nothing of chastity. That virtue is only known to those who are warm, affectionate, and capable of love.

Fortunately for men, women in love are always blinded by their feelings and never know anything of life

It is not a question of medicine and woods, my dear, he is a man of genius. Do you know what that means? It means he is brave, profound, and of clear insight. He plants a tree and his mind travels a thousand years into the future, and he sees visions of the happiness of the human race. People like him are rare and should be loved.

The Russian actor does not know how to be funny; he acts with profundity even in a farce.

I am still tempted to imagine that nature had some grand, marvellous design when she created that girl.

I was ashamed at the sight of the footmen, the coachmen, and the workmen who met us. It always seemed to me they were looking at me and thinking: “Why are you doing nothing?”

Unwilling to these sad shores

A mysterious force is drawing me’

sang the medical student in a pleasant tenor.

‘See the windmill now in ruins’

the art student joined in.

‘See the windmill now in ruins’

repeated the medical student, raising his eyebrows and sadly shaking his head.

He stopped singing for a moment, rubbed his forehead as he tried to recall the words, then he sang so loudly, so well that passers-by looked round at him.

‘Here once I did meet light-hearted love, as free as myself.’