Anna Petrov: 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 paid for everything, absolutely everything! And how dearly! Why have I paid such terrible interest?

— Anton Chekhov

Anna Petrov: Kola, my dearest, stay at home. Ivanov: My love, my unhappy darling, I beg you, don't stop me going out in the evenings. It's cruel and unjust on my part, but let me commit that injustice. It's an agony for me at home. As soon as the sun disappears, my spirit begins to be weighed down by depression. What depression! Don't ask why. I myself don't know. I swear by God's truth I don't know. Here I'm in anguish, I go to the Leaders and there it's still worse; I return from there and here it's depression again, and so all night... Simply despair!

— Anton Chekhov

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

— Anton Chekhov

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

— Anton Chekhov

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

— Anton Chekhov

As a rule, however fine and deep a phrase may be, it only affects the indifferent, and cannot fully satisfy those who are happy or unhappy; that is why dumbness is most often the highest expression of happiness or unhappiness; lovers understand each other better when they are silent, and a fervent, passionate speech delivered by the grave only touches outsiders, while to the widow and children of the dead man it seems cold and trivial.

— Anton Chekhov

A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages - first an acquaintance, next a mistress, and only then a friend.

— Anton Chekhov

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

— Anton Chekhov

Bodkin: Ladies and gentlemen, why are you so glum? Sitting there like a jury after it's been sworn in! ... Let's think up something. What would you like? Forfeits, tug of war, catch, dancing, fireworks?

— Anton Chekhov

But if we reason it out simply and not try to be one bit fancy, then what sort of pride can you possibly take, or what's the sense of ever having it, if man is poorly put together as a physiological type and if the enormous majority of the human race is brutal, stupid, and profoundly unhappy?

— Anton Chekhov