Frases de Antón Chéjov

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“Los infelices son egoístas, injustos, crueles e incapaces de comprender al otro. Los infelices no unen a las personas, las separan.”

“La felicidad no existe. Lo único que existe es el deseo de ser feliz.”

“El gobierno no es Dios. No tiene derecho a quitar lo que no puede regresar.”

“No hay nada más terrible, insultante y deprimente que la banalidad.”

“Si realmente reflexionas, todo es maravilloso en este mundo, todo, excepto nuestros pensamientos y acciones cuando nos olvidamos de reflexionar.”

“A la gente le encanta hablar de sus enfermedades, a pesar de que son las cosas menos interesantes de sus vidas.”

“Hay algo hermoso, poético y conmovedor cuando una persona ama más que el otro, y el otro es indiferente.”

“La fe es una aptitud del espíritu. Es, de hecho, un talento: se tiene que nacer con ella.”

“Cuando pienso en mi vocación no temo a la vida.”

“Si lo que uno hace desagrada a otro, eso no significa que la acción sea mala. Así son las cosas. Cualquier paso serio de uno debe desagradar forzosamente a algún otro. Si tú fueras a combatir por la libertad, también esto haría sufrir a tu madre ¡Qué le vamos a hacer! Quien coloca por encima de todo la tranquilidad de sus allegados debe renunciar por completo a una vida guiada por las ideas.”

“El mar no tiene ni sentido ni piedad.”

“Es fácil conquistar al que piensa que está conquistado.”

“Los hipócritas pretenden ser palomas, políticos, literarios, águilas… Pero no se deje engañar por su apariencia, no son águilas, son ratas.”

“Cualquiera que sea el tema de la conversación, un viejo soldado hablará siempre de guerra.”

“El arte de escribir consiste en decir mucho con pocas palabras.”

“Hay que hablar de cosas serias en serio.”

“Los hombres inteligentes quieren aprender; los demás, enseñar.”

“Del mismo modo que estaré solo en mi tumba, vivo esencialmente solo.”

“El amor es un escándalo de tipo personal.”

“Encontraremos paz. Escucharemos ángeles. Veremos el cielo centelleando con diamantes.”

“He observado que después del matrimonio las personas dejan de ser curiosas.”

“La obras de arte se dividen en dos categorías: las que me gustan y las que no me gustan. No conozco ningún otro criterio.”

“Aislarse en el trabajo creativo es mejor que las críticas negativas que no hacen nada en absoluto.”

“Confieso que enterrar a gente como Belikov constituye un gran placer.”

“Cuando se sugieren muchos remedios para un solo mal, quiere decir que no se puede curar.”

“El hombre vulgar espera lo bueno o lo malo del exterior, el hombre que piensa lo espera de sí mismo.”

“El mundo no perece por los bandidos y los incendios, sino por el odio, la hostilidad, y todas estas pequeñas rencillas.”

“El que nada constantemente en el mar ama la tierra firme.”

“En la naturaleza, una repugnante oruga se transforma en una mariposa encantadora; en cambio, entre los hombres ocurre lo contrario: una encantadora mariposa se transforma en una oruga repugnante.”

“Es algo malo para el escritor asumir lo que no entiende.”

“La brevedad es la hermana del talento.”

“La literatura es mi esposa legítima y la medicina mi amante. Cuando me canso de una, paso la noche con la otra.”

“Las personas que viven solas siempre tienen algo en sus mentes que comparten voluntariamente.”

“Más vale un canario perverso que un piadoso lobo.”

“No puede ser hermoso lo que es grave.”

“La medicina es mi esposa y la literatura mi amante. Cuando me canso de una, paso la noche con la otra. Y sé que es desordenado, pero no es aburrido, y ninguna de ellas pierde nada por mi infidelidad.”

“The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on; science and art are as well.”

“Love is a scandal of the personal sort.”

“The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can’t return even if it wants to.”

“A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples’ character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe…. What a terrible future!”

“No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith.”

“There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined.”

“Good breeding doesn't mean that you won't spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won't notice when someone else does.”

“Dinner at the "Continental" to commemorate the great reform [the abolition of the serfdom in 1861]. Tedious and incongruous. To dine, drink champagne, make a racket, and deliver speeches about national consciousness, the conscience of the people, freedom, and such things, while slaves in tail-coats are running round your tables, veritable serfs, and your coachmen wait outside in the street, in the bitter cold—that is lying to the Holy Ghost.”

“Despicable means used to achieve laudable goals render the goals themselves despicable.”

“Women writers should write a lot if they want to write. Take the English women, for example. What amazing workers.”

“Love is a great thing. It is not by chance that in all times and practically among all cultured peoples love in the general sense and the love of a man for his wife are both called love. If love is often cruel or destructive, the reason lies not in love itself, but in the inequality between people.”

“There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and simplicity in our interactions. Be rude when you’re angry, laugh when something is funny, and answer when you’re asked.”

“We shall find peace. We shall hear the angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.”

“The cherry orchard is now mine!… I bought the estate on which my grandfather and father were slaves, where they were not even permitted in the kitchen.”

“Can words such as Orthodox, Jew, or Catholic really express some sort of exclusive personal virtues or merits?”

“An expansive life, one not constrained by four walls, requires as well an expansive pocket.”

“Dear and most respected bookcase! I welcome your existence, which has for over one hundred years been devoted to the radiant ideals of goodness and justice.”

“The sea has neither meaning nor pity.”

“Instructing in cures, therapists always recommend that “each case be individualized.” If this advice is followed, one becomes persuaded that those means recommended in textbooks as the best, means perfectly appropriate for the template case, turn out to be completely unsuitable in individual cases.”

“I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one.”

“Is it our job to judge? The gendarme, policemen and bureaucrats have been especially prepared by fate for that job. Our job is to write, and only to write.”

“A fiancé is neither this nor that: he’s left one shore, but not yet reached the other.”

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

“I would love to meet a philosopher like Nietzsche on a train or boat and to talk with him all night. Incidentally, I don’t consider his philosophy long-lived. It is not so much persuasive as full of bravura.”

“People who live alone always have something on their minds that they would willingly share.”

“Life is a vexatious trap; when a thinking man reaches maturity and attains to full consciousness he cannot help feeling that he is in a trap from which there is no escape.”

“Whoever sincerely believes that elevated and distant goals are as little use to man as a cow, that “all of our problems” come from such goals, is left to eat, drink, sleep, or, when he gets sick of that, to run up to a chest and smash his forehead on its corner.”

“Sports are positively essential. It is healthy to engage in sports, they are beautiful and liberal, liberal in the sense that nothing serves quite as well to integrate social classes, etc., than street or public games.”

“There are no small number of people in this world who, solitary by nature, always try to go back into their shell like a hermit crab or a snail.”