Anton Chekhov Quotes

“If Iona's heart were to burst and his misery to flow out, it would flood the whole world, it seems, but yet it is not seen. It has found a hiding-place in such an insignificant shell that one would not have found it with a candle by daylight....”

“Whenever you’ll open your eyes, you will find nothing but ugliness and misery all around you. Everything looks fine when you are in an unconscious state. This is the reason why you find it difficult to conceive: CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE BEING. You say, ”Impossible!” That’s why one needs to go through pain. That is called tapascharya, spiritual practice. Whenever one begins to become aware, first he will have to go through suffering. For lives you have created misery around you, who else would pass through it if not you? That is what we have called the karma.”

“Misery suffered did not justify misery to come.”

“For it is discomfort's own essence to be near a man and to feel him in torture of misery, to feel with him the very pain of the misery, and yet to be unable to help.”

“We say that the world is made of sea and land, as though they were equal; but we know that there is more sea in the Western than in the Eastern hemisphere. We say that the firmament is full of stars, as though it were equally full; but we know that there are more stars under the Northern than the Southern pole. We say the element of man are misery and happiness, as though he had an equal proportion of both, and the days of man vicissitudinary, as though he had as many good days as ill, and that he lived under a perpetual equinoctial, night and day equal, good and ill fortune in the same measure. But it is far from that; he drinks in misery, and he tastes happiness; he journeys in misery, he does but walk in happiness: and, which is worstn his misery is positive and dogmatical, his happiness is but disputable and problematical: all men call misery misery, but happiness changes the name by the taste of man.”

“Writing does not cause misery, it is born of misery.”

“Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.”

“No human being really has any misery. It is your own mistake if you complain of the misery.”

“All the stress and misery of life comes from fear of loss. Remember that you can never lose anything without gaining something. To avoid misery, concentrate on what you will gain.”

“We both know that I will not come. We both know that he won't be in Canada. There will be another earthquake, another flood, another war, another reason to not go where we think we are going. It is a strange life, this. Chasing human misery around the planet. We are not the sort of people who go where we say we are going.”