"Chekhov, with an art peculiar to himself, in scattered scenes, in haphazard glimpses into the lives of his characters, in seemingly trivial conversations, has succeeded in so concentrating the atmosphere of the Russia of his day that we feel it in every line we read, oppressive as the mists that hang over a lake at dawn, and, like those mists, made visible to us by the light of an approaching day."
Marian Fell.
Melancholy thoughts haunted me still. Painful as it was to me, yet I remember I tried as it were to make my thoughts still gloomier and more melancholy. You know people who are vain and not very clever have moments when the consciousness that they are miserable affords them positive satisfaction, and they even coquet with their misery for their own entertainment.
Anton Chekhov, A Wayfarer’s Story.
And he realized that there were real people living there who, like people everywhere else, felt insulted, suffered, wept, and cried for help. The feeling of oppressive hate and disgust gave way to an acute feeling of pity and anger against the aggressor. He rushed into the room where there was weeping. Across rows of bottles on a marble-top table he distinguished a suffering face, wet with tears, stretched out his hands towards that face, took a step towards the table, but at once drew back in horror. The weeping girl was drunk.
Anton Chekhov,A Nervous Breakdown.
When this melancholy fit is on me I begin to dislike you,and at such times I must escape from you. In short, I simply have to leave this house. Now.
Anton Chekhov,Ivanoff.
..essentially, if you thought of it, everything was beautiful in this world, everything except for what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher goals of being and our human dignity.
“The Lady with the Little Dog” - Anton Chekhov (via deartaylorr)
(Source: taylormeows)
But little by little I forgot myself, and gave myself up entirely to the consciousness of beauty. I felt this beauty rather strangely. It was not desire, nor ecstacy, nor enjoyment but a painful though pleasant sadness. It was a sadness vague and undefined as a dream.
Anton Chekhov,Beauties.
To fear love is to fear life, and those whose fear life are already three parts dead…
Anton Chekhov.
Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.
Anton Chekhov.
I felt my eyes being opened; I saw that the worship of the art I had held so sacred was a delusion and an empty dream; that I was a slave, a fool, the plaything of the idleness of strangers.
Anton Chekhov,The Swan Song.
(Source: and-iquote)
