To torment and tantalize oneself with hopes of possible fortune is so sweet, so thrilling!

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,...

Lebedev: A time has come of sorrow and sadness for you. Man, my dear friend, is like a samovar. It doesn’t always stand on a shelf in the chill but sometimes they put hot coals...

Ivanov: No, my clever young thing, it’s not a question of romance. I say as before God that I will endure everything – depression and mental illness and ruin and the loss of my wife...

Lebedev: France has a clear and defined policy… The French know what they want. They just want to wipe out the Krauts, finish, but Germany, my friend, is playing a very different tune. Germany has...

True happiness is impossible without solitude. The fallen angel probably betrayed God because he longed for solitude, which angels do not know.

Civilized people must, I believe, satisfy the following criteria:1) They respect human beings as individuals and are therefore always tolerant, gentle, courteous and amenable … They do not create scenes over a hammer or a...

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.

MASHA. Just think, I am already beginning to forget her face. People will not remember us either. They will forget.VERSHININ. Yes. They will forget. That is our fate, you can’t do anything about it. The...

Flies purify the air, and plays–the morals.

There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.

Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.

But then there’s loneliness. However you might philosophise about it, loneliness is a terrible thing, my dear fellow… Although in reality, of course, it’s absolutely of no importance!

The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.

Shabelsky: O mind of genius, you think up things for everyone and teach everyone, but why not for once teach me… Teach me, great brain, show me the way out…

Podtyagin considers whether to take offence or not — and decides to take offence.

You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly...

There will come a time when everybody will know why, for what purpose, there is all this suffering, and there will be no more mysteries. But now we must live … we must work, just...

He keeps going, going, going on; his people groan and fall one after the other, but he keeps on going, going and in the end, perishes himself, but still remains the despot and tsar of...

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

The past,’ he thought, ‘is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of another.’ And it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain;...

I’ve never been in love. I’ve dreamt of it day and night, but my heart is like a fine piano no one can play because the key is lost.

His reading suggested a man swimming in the sea among the wreckage of his ship, and trying to save his life by greedily clutching first at one spar and then at another.

On dit que les philosophes et les vrais sages sont indifférents. C’est faux, l’indifférence est une paralysie de l’ me, une mort anticipée.

Existence is tedious, anyway.

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.

We just philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink vodka. It’s so clear, you see, that if we’re to begin living in the present, we must first of all redeem our past and then be done...

Formerly, when I would feel a desire to understand someone, or myself, I would take into consideration not actions, in which everything is relative, but wishes. Tell me what you want and I’ll tell you...

Be sure not to discuss your hero’s state of mind. Make it clear from his actions.”(Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)

The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak different languages but the same flame burns in them all. Oh, if you only knew what unearthly happiness my soul feels now from being able...

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...

When a woman is plain, people say, ‘What beautiful eyes you have, beautiful hair.

For the salvation of his soul the Muslim digs a well. It would be a fine thing if each of us were to leave behind a school, or a well, or something of the sort,...

[W]hen people are ashamed they hold aloof, above all from those nearest to them, and are unreserved with strangers

The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.

No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand… Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing.

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)

In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations!”(Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)

With total rapture and delight he talks about the birds which he can see from his prison window, and which he had never noticed before, when he was a minister. Now of course, after he’s...

Ivanov: I am a bad, pathetic and worthless individual. One needs to be pathetic, too, worn out and drained by drink, like Pasha, to be still fond of me and to respect me. My God,...

And you know that anyone who at least once in his life has caught a perch or seen blackbirds migrating in the fall, when they rush in flocks over the village on clear, cool days,...

In all nature there seemed to be a feeling of hopelessness and pain. The earth, like a ruined woman sitting alone in a dark room and trying not to think of the past, was brooding...

…a writer should not so much write as embroider on paper; the work should be painstaking, laborious.

Wisdom…. comes not from age, but from education and learning.

Once a man gets a fixed idea, there’s nothing to be done.

The State is not God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to.

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth...

Anna Petrovna: I am beginning to think, doctor, that fate has cheated me. The majority of people, who maybe are no better than I am, are happy and pay nothing for that happiness. I have...

Science and art,… they seek the truth and the meaning of life, they seek God, [and] the soul, and when they are harnessed to passing needs and activities,… then they only complicate and encumber life.

Ah yes, freedom! Even a hint of it, just the faintest hope of it, is enough to make one’s spirit soar, don’t you think?