Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

Essentially all this is crude and meaningless, and romantic love appears as meaningless as an avalanche which involuntarily rolls down a mountain and overwhelms people. But when one listens to music, all this is: that some people lie in their graves and sleep, and that one woman is alive — gray-haired, she is sitting in a box in the theatre, quiet and majestic, and the avalanche seems no longer meaningless, since in nature everything has a meaning. And everything is forgiven, and it would be strange not to forgive.

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Olga Ivanovna regarded old chairs, stools, sofas, with the same respectful tenderness as she regarded old dogs and horses, and her room, therefore, was something like an alms-house for furniture. Round the mirror, on all tables and shelves, stood photographs of uninteresting, half-forgotten people; on the walls hung pictures at which nobody ever looked; and it was always dark in the room, because there burnt there only one lamp with a blue shade.

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If you cry “Forward,” you must without fail explain in which direction one must go. Do you not see that, if without explaining the direction, you fire off this word simultaneously at a monk and at a revolutionary, they will proceed in precisely opposite directions?

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It is said in Holy Writ: “Fathers, do not irritate your children,” even the wicked and good-for-nothing children; but the fathers irritate me, irritate me terribly. My contemporaries chime in with them and the youngsters follow, and every minute they strike me in the face with their smooth words.

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That the aunt suffered and did not show it gave him the impression of a trick.

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O.I. was in constant motion; such women, like bees, carry about a fertilizing pollen….

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Don’t marry a rich woman — she will drive you out of the house; don’t marry a poor woman — you won’t sleep; but marry the freest freedom, the lot and life of a Cossack. (Ukrainian saying.)

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Aliosha: “I often hear people say: ‘Before marriage there is romance, and then — goodbye, illusion!’ How heartless and coarse it is.”

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So long as a man likes the splashing of a fish, he is a poet; but when he knows that the splashing is nothing but the chase of the weak by the strong, he is a thinker; but when he does not understand what sense there is in the chase, or what use in the equilibrium which results from destruction, he is becoming silly and dull, as he was when a child. And the more he knows and thinks, the sillier he becomes.

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The death of a child. I have no sooner sat down in peace than — bang — fate lets fly at me.

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The she-wolf, nervous and anxious, fond of her young, dragged away a foal into her winter-shelter, thinking him a lamb. She knew that there was a ewe there and that the ewe had young. While she was dragging the foal away, suddenly some one whistled; she was alarmed and dropped him, but he followed her. They arrived at the shelter. He began to suck like the young wolves. Throughout the winter he changed but little; he only grew thin and his legs longer, and the spot on his forehead turned into a triangle. The she-wolf was in delicate health.

[Footnote 1: A sketch of part of the story “Whitehead.”]

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They invited celebrities to these evening parties, and it was dull because there are few people of talent in Moscow, and the same singers and reciters performed at all evening parties.

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She has not before felt herself so free and easy with a man.

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You wait until you grow up and I’ll teach you declamation.

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It seemed to her that at the show many of the pictures were alike.

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There filed up before you a whole line of laundry-maids.

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Kostya insisted that the women had robbed themselves.

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L. put himself in the place of the juryman and interpreted it thus: if it was a case of house-breaking, then there was no theft, because the laundresses themselves sold the linen and spent the money on drink; but if it was a case of theft, then there could have been no house-breaking.

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Fiodor was flattered that his brother had found him at the same table with a famous actor.

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When Y. spoke or ate, his beard moved as if he had no teeth in his mouth.

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Ivashin loved Nadya Vishnyevsky and was afraid of his love. When the butler told him that the old lady had just gone out, but the young lady was at home, he fumbled in his fur coat and dress-coat pocket, found his card, and said: “Right.”

But it was not all right. Driving from his house in the morning, to pay a visit, he thought that he was compelled to it by conventions of society, which weighed heavily upon him. But now it was clear to him that he went to pay calls only because somewhere far away in the depths of his soul, as under a veil, there lay hidden a hope that he would see Nadya…. And he suddenly felt pitiful, sad, and a little frightened….

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