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I Can't Accept "our Nervous Age," Since Mankind Has Been Nervous During Every Age. Whoever Fears Nervousness Should Turn Into A Sturgeon Or Smelt; If A Sturgeon Makes A Stupid Mistake, It Can Only Be One: To End Up On A Hook, And Then In A Pan In A Pastry Shell.

-Anton Chekhov

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I Can't Accept "our

Anton Chekhov

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I Can't Accept "our Nervous Age," Since Mankind Has Been Nervous During Every Age. Whoever Fears Nervousness Should Turn Into A Sturgeon Or Smelt; If A Sturgeon Makes A Stupid Mistake, It Can Only Be One: To End Up On A Hook, And Then In A Pan In A Pastry Shell.

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If One Wants To Lead A Good Life, A Human Life, One Must Work.

Great Jove Angry Is No Longer Jove.

A Writer Is Not A Confectioner, A Cosmetic Dealer, Or An Entertainer.

I Abide By A Rule Concerning Reviews: I Will Never Ask, Neither In Writing Nor In Person, That A Word Be Put In About My Book.... One Feels Cleaner This Way. When Someone Asks That His Book Be Reviewed He Risks Running Up Against A Vulgarity Offensive To Authorial Sensibilities.

Moscow Is A City That Has Much Suffering Ahead Of It.

Man Is What He Believes.

Only One Who Loves Can Remember So Well.

That Can Not Possibly Be, Because It Could Never Possibly Be.

[ognev] Recalled Endless, Heated, Purely Russian Arguments, When The Wranglers, Spraying Spittle And Banging Their Fists On The Table, Fail To Understand Yet Interrupt One Another, Themselves Not Even Noticing It, Contradict Themselves With Every Phrase, Change The Subject, Then, Having Argued For Two Or Three Hours, Begin To Laugh.

I Divide All Literary Works Into Two Categories: Those I Like And Those I Don't Like. No Other Criterion Exists For Me.

Writers Are As Jealous As Pigeons.

To A Chemist, Nothing On Earth Is Unclean. A Writer Must Be As Objective As A Chemist; He Must Abandon The Subjective Line; He Must Know That Dungheaps Play A Very Respectable Part In A Landscape, And That Evil Passions Are As Inherent In Life As Good Ones.

Love, Friendship And Respect Do Not Unite People As Much As Common Hatred For Something.

Love Is A Scandal Of The Personal Sort.

We Learn About Life Not From Plusses Alone, But From Minuses As Well.

Love Is A Great Thing. It Is Not By Chance That In All Times And Practically Among All Cultured Peoples Love In The General Senseand The Love Of A Man For His Wife Are Both Called Love. If Love Is Often Cruel Or Destructive, The Reasons Lie Not In Love Itself, But In The Inequality Between People.

When All Is Said And Done, No Literature Can Outdo The Cynicism Of Real Life; You Won't Intoxicate With One Glass Someone Who Has Already Drunk Up A Whole Barrel.

It Is Not Only The Prisoners Who Grow Coarse And Hardened From Corporal Punishment, But Those As Well Who Perpetrate The Act Or Are Present To Witness It.

One Must Never Place A Loaded Rifle On The Stage If It Isn't Going To Go Off. It's Wrong To Make Promises You Don't Mean To Keep.

Not Only After Two Or Three Centuries, But In A Million Years, Life Will Still Be As It Was; Life Does Not Change, It Remains For Ever, Following Its Own Laws Which Do Not Concern Us, Or Which, At Any Rate, You Will Never Find Out. Migrant Birds, Cranes For Example, Fly And Fly, And Whatever Thoughts, High Or Low, Enter Their Heads, They Will Still Fly And Not Know Why Or Where. They Fly And Will Continue To Fly, Whatever Philosophers Come To Life Among Them; They May Philosophize As Much As They Like, Only They Will Fly.

I Was Oppressed With A Sense Of Vague Discontent And Dissatisfaction With My Own Life, Which Was Passing So Quickly And Uninterestingly, And I Kept Thinking It Would Be A Good Thing If I Could Tear My Heart Out Of My Breast, That Heart Which Had Grown So Weary Of Life.

Write, Write, Write-till Your Fingers Break.

I'm In Mourning For My Life.

If You Ever Have Need Of My Life, Come And Take It.

The Leaves Did Not Stir On The Trees, Grasshoppers Chirruped, And The Monotonous Hollow Sound Of The Sea Rising Up From Below, Spoke Of The Peace, Of The Eternal Sleep Awaiting Us. So It Must Have Sounded When There Was No Yalta, No Oreanda Here; So It Sounds Now, And It Will Sound As Indifferently And Monotonously When We Are All No More. And In This Constancy, In This Complete Indifference To The Life And Death Of Each Of Us, There Lies Hid, Perhaps, A Pledge Of Our Eternal Salvation, Of The Unceasing Movement Of Life Upon Earth, Of Unceasing Progress Towards Perfection.

Time Will Pass, And We Shall Go Away For Ever, And We Shall Be Forgotten, Our Faces Will Be Forgotten, Our Voices, And How Many There Were Of Us; But Our Sufferings Will Pass Into Joy For Those Who Will Live After Us, Happiness And Peace Will Be Established Upon Earth, And They Will Remember Kindly And Bless Those Who Have Lived Before.

It Is Time For Writers To Admit That Nothing In This World Makes Sense. Only Fools And Charlatans Think They Know And Understand Everything. The Stupider They Are, The Wider They Conceive Their Horizons To Be. And If An Artist Decides To Declare That He Understands Nothing Of What He Sees - This In Itself Constitutes A Considerable Clarity In The Realm Of Thought, And A Great Step Forward.

These People Have Learned Not From Books, But In The Fields, In The Wood, On The River Bank. Their Teachers Have Been The Birds Themselves, When They Sang To Them, The Sun When It Left A Glow Of Crimson Behind It At Setting, The Very Trees, And Wild Herbs.

Desription Should Be Very Brief And Have An Incidental Nature.

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If I Wanted To Order A Ring For Myself, The Inscription I Should Choose Would Be: "nothing Passes Away." I Believe That Nothing Passes Away Without Leaving A Trace, And That Every Step We Take, However Small, Has Significance For Our Present And Our Future Existence.

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It Is Easy To Be A Philosopher In Academia, But It Is Very Difficult To Be A Philosopher In Life.

Any Idiot Can Face A Crisis - It's Day To Day Living That Wears You Out.

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My Mistress Has Come Home; At Last I've Seen Her. Now I'm Ready To Die.

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Transcendentalism

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He Is An Emancipated Thinker Who Is Not Afraid To Write Foolish Things.

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What A Delight It Is To Respect People!

I Should Like To Meet A Philosopher Like Nietzsche Somewhere In A Train Or A Steamer, And To Spend The Whole Night Talking To Him. I Consider His Philosophy Won't Last Long, However. It's More Showy Than Convincing.

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I Am Now And Have Always Been A Stranger To The Realm Of Practical Matters.

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In Displaying The Psychology Of Your Characters, Minute Particulars Are Essential. God Save Us From Vague Generalizations! Be Sure Not To Discuss Your Hero's State Of Mind. Make It Clear From His Actions. Nor Is It Necessary To Portray Many Main Characters. Let Two People Be The Center Of Gravity In Your Story: He And She.

Art, Especially The Stage, Is An Area Where It Is Impossible To Walk Without Stumbling. There Are In Store For You Many Unsuccessful Days And Whole Unsuccessful Seasons: There Will Be Great Misunderstandings And Deep Disappointments… You Must Be Prepared For All This, Expect It And Nevertheless, Stubbornly, Fanatically Follow Your Own Way.

Everyone Has The Same God; Only People Differ.

A Writer Should Not So Much Write As Embroider On Paper; The Work Should Be Painstaking, Laborious.

Everything Should Be First-rate In A Person, His Face, Clothes, Soul And Thoughts.

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We Live Not In Order To Eat, But In Order Not To Know What We Feel Like Eating.

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Satiation, Like Any State Of Vitality, Always Contains A Degree Of Impudence, And That Impudence Emerges First And Foremost When The Sated Man Instructs The Hungry One.

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The Critics Suppose That It Is Easy To Write A Play. They Aren't Aware That Writing A Good Play Is Difficult And Writing A Bad One Is Twice As Hard.

The Task Of A Writer Is Not To Solve The Problem But To State The Problem Correctly.

It Is Easier To Ask Of The Poor Than Of The Rich.

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Dear, Sweet, Unforgettable Childhood!

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A Good Upbringing Means Not That You Won't Spill Sauce On The Tablecloth, But That You Won't Notice It When Someone Else Does.

When You Live On Cash, You Understand The Limits Of The World Around Which You Navigate Each Day. Credit Leads Into A Desert With Invisible Boundaries.

If You Fear Loneliness, Then Don't Get Married.

We Old Bachelors Smell Like Dogs, Do We? So Be It. But I Must Take Issue With Your Claim That Doctors Who Treat Female Illnesses Are Womanizers And Cynics At Heart. Gynecologists Deal With Savage Prose The Likes Of Which You Have Never Dreamed Of.

Then I Feel So Happy And At The Same Time So Sad, It's Unimaginable.

Flies Purify The Air, And Plays - The Morals.

Oh, I Don't Object, Of Course, To Cutting Wood From Necessity, But Why Destroy The Forests? The Woods Of Russia Are Trembling Under The Blows Of The Axe. Millions Of Trees Have Perished. The Homes Of The Wild Animals And Birds Have Been Desolated; The Rivers Are Shrinking, And Many Beautiful Landscapes Are Gone Forever. And Why? Because Men Are Too Lazy And Stupid To Stoop Down And Pick Up Their Fuel From The Ground.

He Always Seemed To Women Different From What He Was, And They Loved In Him Not Himself, But The Man Created By Their Imagination, Whom They Had Been Eagerly Seeking All Their Lives; And Afterwards, When They Noticed Their Mistake, They Loved Him All The Same.

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He Had Two Lives: One, Open, Seen And Known By All Who Cared To Know, Full Of Relative Truth And Of Relative Falsehood, Exactly Like The Lives Of His Friends And Acquaintances; And Another Life Running Its Course In Secret. And Through Some Strange, Perhaps Accidental, Conjunction Of Circumstances, Everything That Was Essential, Of Interest And Of Value To Him, Everything In Which He Was Sincere And Did Not Deceive Himself, Everything That Made The Kernel Of His Life, Was Hidden From Other People.

Every Person Lives His Real, Most Interesting Life Under The Cover Of Secrecy.

One Must Be A God To Be Able To Tell Successes From Failures Without Making A Mistake.

To Describe Drunkenness For The Colorful Vocabulary Is Rather Cynical. There Is Nothing Easier Than To Capitalize On Drunkards.

When A Man Fails To Understand Something He Is Conscious Of A Discord, And Seeks For The Cause Of It Not In Himself, As He Should, But Outside Himself - Hence The War With What He Does Not Understand.

Nothing Lulls And Inebriates Like Money; When You Have A Lot, The World Seems A Better Place Than It Actually Is.

People Understand God As The Expression Of The Most Lofty Morality. Maybe He Needs Only Perfect People.

A Man And A Woman Marry Because Both Of Them Do Not Know What To Do With Themselves.

The Personal Life Of Every Individual Is Based On Secrecy, And Perhaps It Is Partly For That Reason That Civilized Man Is So Nervously Anxious That Personal Privacy Should Be Respected.

Russian Forests Crash Down Under The Axe, Billions Of Trees Are Dying, The Habitations Of Animals And Birds Are Laid Waste, Rivers Grow Shallow And Dry Up, Marvelous Landscapes Are Disappearing Forever.... Man Is Endowed With Creativity In Order To Multiply That Which Has Been Given Him; He Has Not Created, But Destroyed. There Are Fewer And Fewer Forests, Rivers Are Drying Up, Wildlife Has Become Extinct, The Climate Is Ruined, And The Earth Is Becoming Ever Poorer And Uglier.

I'm The Seagull. No, That's Not It. I'm An Actress. That's It.

You Only Have To Start A Job Of Work To Realize How Few Decent, Honest Folk There Are About.

A Man Can Deceive His Fiancee Or His Mistress As Much As He Likes And, In The Eyes Of A Woman He Loves, An Ass May Pass For A Philosopher. But A Daughter Is A Different Matter.

The Unhappy Are Egoistic, Spiteful, Unjust, Cruel, And Less Capable Of Understanding Each Other Than Fools. Unhappiness Does Not Bring People Together But Draws Them Apart, And Even Where One Would Fancy People Should Be United By The Similarity Of Their Sorrow, Far More Injustice And Cruelty Is Generated Than In Comparatively Placid Surroundings.

It's Worth Living Abroad To Study Up On Genteel And Delicate Manners. The Maid Smiles Continuously; She Smiles Like A Duchess On A Stage, While At The Same Time It Is Clear From Her Face That She Is Exhausted From Overwork.

Faith Is A Capacity Of The Spirit. It Is Like Talent: You Have To Be Born With It

Nothing Can Be Accomplished By Logic And Ethics.

The Problem Is That We Attempt To Solve The Simplest Questions Cleverly, Thereby Rendering Them Unusually Complex. One Should Seekthe Simple Solution.

The World Perishes Not From Bandits And Fires, But From Hatred, Hostility, And All These Petty Squabbles.

What Seems To Us Serious, Significant And Important Will, In Future Times, Be Forgotten Or Won't Seem Important At All.

Even While Lying, You'll Be Believed If You Speak With Authority.

The Snow Has Not Yet Left The Earth But Spring Is Already Asking To Enter Your Heart.

The More Refined One Is, The More Unhappy.

And I Despise Your Books, I Despise Wisdom And The Blessings Of This World. It Is All Worthless, Fleeting, Illusory, And Deceptive, Like A Mirage. You May Be Proud, Wise, And Fine, But Death Will Wipe You Off The Face Of The Earth As Though You Were No More Than Mice Burrowing Under The Floor, And Your Posterity, Your History, Your Immortal Geniuses Will Burn Or Freeze Together With The Earthly Globe.

Everything On Earth Is Beautiful, Everything -- Except What We Ourselves Think And Do When We Forget The Higher Purposes Of Life And Our Own Human Dignity.

I've Been Reading Reviews Of My Stories For Twenty-five Years, And Can't Remember A Single Useful Point In Any Of Them, Or The Slightest Good Advice. The Only Reviewer Who Ever Made An Impression On Me Was Skabichevsky, Who Prophesied That I Would Die Drunk In The Bottom Of A Ditch.

The Wealthy Are Always Surrounded By Hangers-on; Science And Art Are As Well.

People's Destinies Are So Different. Some People Drag Along, Unnoticed And Boring—they're All Alike, And They're All Unhappy. Then There Are Others, Like For Instance You—you're One In A Million. You're Happy—

It's Better To Live Down A Scandal Than To Ruin One's Life.

If I Were Asked To Chose Between Execution And Life In Prison I Would, Of Course, Chose The Latter. It's Better To Live Somehow Than Not At All.

Capital Punishment

Hypocrisy Is A Revolting, Psychopathic State.

Every Coming Year Is As Bad As The Previous One, The Only Difference Being That In Most Cases It Is Even Worse.

If In The First Act You Introduce A Gun, By The Third Act You Have To Use It.

An Artist Observes, Selects, Guesses, And Synthesizes.

Do You Know When You May Concede Your Insignificance? Before God Or, Perhaps, Before The Intellect, Beauty, Or Nature, But Not Before People. Among People, One Must Be Conscious Of One's Dignity.

I Should Think I'm Going To Be A Perpetual Student.

When You're Thirsty And It Seems That You Could Drink The Entire Ocean That's Faith; When You Start To Drink And Finish Only A Glass Or Two That's Science.

Write Only Of What Is Important And Eternal.

A Grimy Fly Can Soil The Entire Wall And A Small, Dirty Little Act Can Ruin The Entire Proceedings.

The More Simply We Look At Ticklish Questions, The More Placid Will Be Our Lives And Relationships.

Indeed, In Russia There Is A Terrible Poverty Of Facts, And A Terrible Abundance Of Reflections Of All Sorts.

A Woman Can Become A Man's Friend Only In The Following Stages - First An Acquantaince, Next A Mistress, And Only Then A Friend.

Of Course Politics Is An Interesting And Engrossing Thing. It Offers No Immutable Laws, Nearly Always Prevaricates, But As Far Asblather And Sharpening The Mind Go, It Provides Inexhaustible Material.

Knowledge Is Of No Value Unless You Put It Into Practice.

In Descriptions Of Nature One Must Seize On Small Details, Grouping Them So That When The Reader Closes His Eyes He Gets A Picture.

I Am Dying. I Haven't Drunk Champagne For A Long Time.

Who Keeps The Tavern And Serves Up The Drinks? The Peasant. Who Squanders And Drinks Up Money Belonging To The Peasant Commune, The School, The Church? The Peasant. Who Would Steal From His Neighbor, Commit Arson, And Falsely Denounce Another For A Bottle Of Vodka? The Peasant.

Perhaps The Feelings That We Experience When We Are In Love Represent A Normal State. Being In Love Shows A Person Who He Should Be.

Self Improvement

I Let Myself Go At The Beginning And Write With An Easy Mind, But By The Time I Get To The Middle I Begin To Grow Timid And To Fear My Story Will Be Too Long. . .that Is Why The Beginning Of My Stories Is Always Very Promising And Looks As Though I Were Starting On A Novel, And The Middle Is Huddled And Timid, And The End Is...like Fireworks.

Once A Man Gets A Fixed Idea, There's Nothing To Be Done.

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.

An Enormously Vast Field Lies Between "god Exists" And "there Is No God." The Truly Wise Man Traverses It With Great Difficulty. A Russian Knows One Or The Other Of These Two Extremes, But Is Not Interested In The Middle Ground. He Usually Knows Nothing, Or Very Little.

The World Is, Of Course, Nothing But Our Conception Of It.

If Ever My Life Can Be Of Any Use To You, Come And Claim It.

I Am Writing A Play Which I Probably Will Not Finish Until The End Of November. I Am Writing It With Considerable Pleasure, Though I Sin Frightfully Against The Conventions Of The Stage. It Is A Comedy With Three Female Parts, Six Male, Four Acts, A Landscape (view Of The Lake), Lots Of Talk On Literature, Little Action And Tons Of Love.

To Make A Face From Marble Means To Remove From The Slab Everything That Is Not The Face

Man Has Been Endowed With Reason, With The Power To Create, So That He Can Add To What He's Been Given.

Posterity Will Say As Usual: "in The Past Things Were Better, The Present Is Worse Than The Past.

In Nature A Repulsive Caterpillar Turns Into A Lovely Butterfly. But With Human Beings It Is The Other Way Round: A Lovely Butterfly Turns Into A Repulsive Caterpillar.

Each Of Us Is Full Of Too Many Wheels, Screws And Valves To Permit Us To Judge One Another On A First Impression Or By Two Or Three External Signs.

First Impression

I Was So Drunk The Whole Time That I Took Bottles For Girls And Girls For Bottles.

To Live Simply To Die Is By No Means Amusing, But To Live With The Knowledge That You Will Die Before Your Time, That's Really Is Idiotic

Country Acquaintances Are Charming Only In The Country And Only In The Summer. In The City In Winter They Lose Half Of Their Appeal.

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Alan K. Simpson

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