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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.

-Anton Chekhov

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If I Wanted To

Anton Chekhov

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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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I Long To Embrace, To Include In My Own Short Life, All That Is Accessible To Man. I Long To Speak, To Read, To Wield A Hammer In A Great Factory, To Keep Watch At Sea, To Plow. I Want To Be Walking Along The Nevsky Prospect, Or In The Open Fields, Or On The Ocean - Wherever My Imagination Ranges.

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.

I Feel More Confident And More Satisfied When I Reflect That I Have Two Professions And Not One. Medicine Is My Lawful Wife And Literature Is My Mistress. When I Get Tired Of One I Spend The Night With The Other. Though It's Disorderly It's Not So Dull, And Besides, Neither Really Loses Anything, Through My Infidelity.

In Countries Where There Is A Mild Climate, Less Effort Is Expended On The Struggle With Nature And Man Is Kinder And More Gentle.

In A Century Or Two, Or In A Millennium, People Will Live In A New Way, A Happier Way. We Won"t Be There To See It - But It"s Why We Live, Why We Work. It"s Why We Suffer. We"re Creating It. That"s The Purpose Of Our Existence. The Only Happiness We Can Know Is To Work Toward That Goal.

In Descriptions Of Nature One Must Seize On Small Details, Grouping Them So That When The Reader Closes His Eyes He Gets A Picture. For Instance, You'll Have A Moonlit Night If You Write That On The Mill Dam A Piece Of Glass From A Broken Bottle Glittered Like A Bright Little Star, And That The Black Shadow Of A Dog Or A Wolf Rolled Past Like A Ball.

Formerly, When I Would Feel A Desire To Understand Someone, Or Myself, I Would Take Into Consideration Not Actions, In Which Everything Is Relative, But Wishes. Tell Me What You Want And I'll Tell You Who You Are.

I've Noticed That People Who Get Married Cease To Be Curious.

It Doesn't Matter That Your Painting Is Small. Kopecks Are Also Small, But When A Lot Are Put Together They Make A Ruble. Each Painting Displayed In A Gallery And Each Good Book That Makes It Into A Library, No Matter How Small They May Be, Serve A Great Cause: Accretion Of The National Wealth.

I Still Lack A Political, Religious And Philosophical World View - I Change It Every Month - And So I'll Have To Limit Myself To Descriptions Of How My Heroes Love, Marry, Give Birth, Die, And How They Speak.

For God's Sake, Have Some Self-respect And Do Not Run Off At The Mouth If Your Brain Is Out To Lunch.

Perhaps Man Has A Hundred Senses, And When He Dies The Five Senses That We Know Perish With Him, And The Other Ninety-five Remain Alive... Everything That Is Unattainable For Us Now Will One Day Be Near And Clear... But We Must Work.

You Don't Understand, You Fool' Says Yegor, Looking Dreamily Up At The Sky. 'you've Never Understood What Kind Of Person I Am, Nor Will You In A Million Years... You Just Think I'm A Mad Person Who Has Thrown His Life Away... Once The Free Spirit Has Taken Hold Of A Man, There's No Way Of Getting It Out Of Him.

It's Been A Long Time Since I've Had Champagne.

[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 Confess I Seldom Commune With My Conscience When I Write.

Not One Of Our Mortal Gauges Is Suitable For Evaluating Non-existence, For Making Judgments About That Which Is Not A Person.

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

There Is Nothing More Awful, Insulting, And Depressing Than Banality.

To Advise Is Not To Compel.

In My Opinion It Is Harmful To Place Important Things In The Hands Of Philanthropy, Which In Russia Is Marked By A Chance Character. Nor Should Important Matters Depend On Leftovers, Which Are Never There. I Would Prefer That The Government Treasury Take Care Of It.

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

It Is As Acceptable Now To Love The Wives Of Others As It Is To Smoke Their Cigars And Read Their Books.

Tsars And Slaves, The Intelligent And The Obtuse, Publicans And Pharisees All Have An Identical Legal And Moral Right To Honor The Memory Of The Deceased As They See Fit, Without Regard For Anyone Else's Opinion And Without The Fear Of Hindering One Another.

There Is No National Science, Just As There Is No National Multiplication Table; What Is National Is No Longer Science.

He Who Desires Nothing, Hopes For Nothing, And Is Afraid Of Nothing, Cannot Be An Artist.

While You're Playing Cards With A Regular Guy Or Having A Bite To Eat With Him, He Seems A Peaceable, Good-humoured And Not Entirely Dense Person. But Just Begin A Conversation With Him About Something Inedible, Politics Or Science, For Instance, And He Ends Up In A Deadend Or Starts In On Such An Obtuse And Base Philosophy That You Can Only Wave Your Hand And Leave.

Life Has Gone By As If I Never Lived

You Are Right In Demanding That An Artist Should Take An Intelligent Attitude To His Work, But You Confuse Two Things: Solving A Problem And Stating A Problem Correctly.

I Have The Feeling That I've Seen Everything, But Failed To Notice The Elephants.

In One-act Pieces There Should Be Only Rubbish - That Is Their Strength.

If There Is A Gun Hanging On The Wall In The First Act, It Must Fire In The Last.

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

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

Without A Knowledge Of Languages You Feel As If You Don't Have A Passport.

People Are Far More Sincere And Good-humored At Speeding Their Parting Guests Than On Meeting Them.

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.

Love, Respect, And Friendship Do Unite A People As Well As A Common Hatred Does.

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—

The Unhappy Are Egotistical, Base, Unjust, Cruel, And Even Less Capable Of Understanding One Another Than Are Idiots. Unhappinessdoes Not Unite People, But Separates Them.

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

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

To Believe In God Is Not Hard. Inquisitors, Byron And Arakcheev Believed In Him. No, Believe In Man!

The People I Am Afraid Of Are The Ones Who Look For Tendentiousness Between The Lines And Are Determined To See Me As Either Liberal Or Conservative. I Am Neither Liberal, Nor Conservative, Nor Gradualist, Nor Monk, Nor Indifferentist. I Would Like To Be A Free Artist And Nothing Else, And I Regret God Has Not Given Me The Strength To Be One.

Please, Understand That Your Life Is Bad And Dreary!

When An Actor Has Money He Doesn't Send Letters, He Sends Telegrams.

I Will Begin With What In My Opinion Is Your Lack Of Restraint. You Are Like A Spectator In A Theatre Who Expresses His Enthusiasm So Unrestrainedly That He Prevents Himself And Others From Hearing. That Lack Of Restraint Is Particularly Noticeable In The Descriptions Of Nature With Which You Interrupt Dialogues; When One Reads Them, These Descriptions, One Wishes They Were More Compact, Shorter, Say Two Or Three Lines.

Man Has Been Endowed With Reason, With The Power To Create, So That He Can Add To What He's Been Given. But Up To Now He Hasn't Been A Creator, Only A Destroyer. Forests Keep Disappearing, Rivers Dry Up, Wild Life's Become Extinct, The Climate's Ruined And The Land Grows Poorer And Uglier Every Day.

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.

Anna Petrovna: Never Talk To Women About Your Own Good Qualities. Let Them Find Out For Themselves.

Better A Debauched Canary Than A Pious Wolf.

Brevity - The Sister Of Talent.

Advertising Is The Very Essence Of Democracy.

Transcendentalism

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

In Order To Cultivate Yourself And To Drop No Lower Than The Level Of The Milieu In Which You Have Landed, It Is Not Enough To Read Pickwick And Memorize A Monologue From Faust... You Need To Work Continually Day And Night, To Read Ceaselessly, To Study, To Exercise Your Will... Each Hour Is Precious.

It Always Seems To The Brothers And The Father That Their Brother Or Son Didn't Marry The Right Person.

It Is Depressing To Hear The Unfortunate Or Dying Man Jest.

Pharisaism, Obtuseness And Tyranny Reign Not Only In The Homes Of Merchants And In Jails; I See It In Science, In Literature, And Among Youth. I Consider Any Emblem Or Label A Prejudice.... My Holy Of Holies Is The Human Body, Health, Intellect, Talent, Inspiration, Love And The Most Absolute Of Freedoms, The Freedom From Force And Falsity In Whatever Forms They Might Appear.

Everyone Judges Plays As If They Were Very Easy To Write. They Don't Know That It Is Hard To Write A Good Play, And Twice As Hardand Tortuous To Write A Bad One.

If Only One Tooth Aches, Rejoice That Not All Of Them Ache.... If Your Wife Betrays You, Be Glad That She Betrayed Only You And Not The Nation.

A Man Who Doesn't Drink Is Not, In My Opinion, Fully A Man.

Women Writers Should Write A Lot If They Want To Write. Take The English Women, For Example. What Amazing Workers.

Medicine Is My Lawful Wife And Literature My Mistress; When I Get Tired Of One, I Spend The Night With The Other.

In All The Universe Nothing Remains Permanent And Unchanged But The Spirit.

When You Describe The Miserable And Unfortunate, And Want To Make The Reader Feel Pity, Try To Be Somewhat Colder - That Seems To Give A Kind Of Background To Another's Grief, Against Which It Stands Out More Clearly. Whereas In Your Story The Characters Cry And You Sigh. Yes, Be More Cold. ... The More Objective You Are, The Stronger Will Be The Impression You Make.

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.

One Usually Dislikes A Play While Writing It, But Afterward It Grows On One. Let Others Judge And Make Decisions.

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.

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.

Never Bring A Cannon On Stage In Act I Unless You Intend To Fire It By The Last Act.

For The Salvation Of His Soul The Muslim Digs A Well. It Would Be A Fine Thing If Each Of Us Were To Leave Behind A School, Or A Well, Or Something Of The Sort, So That Life Would Not Pass By And Retreat Into Eternity Without A Trace.

People Should Be Beautiful In Every Way - In Their Faces, In The Way They Dress, In Their Thoughts, And In Their Innermost Selves.

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

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

I Don't Like Being Successful; The Subjects Which Sit In My Head Are Annoyed And Jealous Of What Has Already Been Written.

Critics Are Like Horse-flies Which Hinder The Horses In Their Plowing Of The Soil. The Horse Works, All Its Muscles Drawn Tight Like The Strings On A Double-bass, And A Fly Settles On His Flanks And Tickles And Buzzes. And What Does The Fly Buzz About? It Scarcely Knows Itself; Simply Because It Is Restless And Wants To Proclaim: 'look, I Too Am Living On The Earth. See, I Can Buzz, Too, Buzz About Anything.'

Nature's Law Says That The Strong Must Prevent The Weak From Living, But Only In A Newspaper Article Or Textbook Can This Be Packaged Into A Comprehensible Thought. In The Soup Of Everyday Life, In The Mixture Of Minutia From Which Human Relations Are Woven, It Is Not A Law. It Is A Logical Incongruity When Both Strong And Weak Fall Victim To Their Mutual Relations, Unconsciously Subservient To Some Unknown Guiding Power That Stands Outside Of Life, Irrelevant To Man.

What A Fine Weather Today! Can’t Choose Whether To Drink Tea Or To Hang Myself.

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

It's Immoral To Steal, But You Can Take Things.

Don't Tell Me The Moon Is Shining; Show Me The Glint Of Light On Broken Glass.

Thought And Beauty, Like A Hurricane Or Waves, Should Not Know Conventional, Delimited Forms.

Solomon Made A Big Mistake When He Asked For Wisdom.

If You Cry 'forward', You Must Without Fail Make Plain In What Direction To Go.

In Russia There Is No Philosophy, But Philosophize Everything, Even The Small Fry.

The Role Of The Artist Is To Ask Questions, Not Answer Them.

When A Lot Of Remedies Are Suggested For A Disease, That Means It Can't Be Cured.

Calculating Selfishness Is The Annihilation Of Self.

Writers Are As Jealous As Pigeons.

Exquisite Nature, Daydreams, And Music Say One Thing, Real Life Another.

There Are Plenty Of Good People, But Only A Very, Very Few Are Precise And Disciplined.

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

We Are Accustomed To Live In Hopes Of Good Weather, A Good Harvest, A Nice Love-affair, Hopes Of Becoming Rich Or Getting The Office Of Chief Of Police, But I've Never Noticed Anyone Hoping To Get Wiser. We Say To Ourselves: It'll Be Better Under A New Tsar, And In Two Hundred Years It'll Still Be Better, And Nobody Tries To Make This Good Time Come Tomorrow. On The Whole, Life Gets More And More Complex Every Day And Moves On Its Own Sweet Will, And People Get More And More Stupid, And Get Isolated From Life In Ever-increasing Numbers.

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

It's Easier To Write About Socrates Than About A Young Woman Or A Cook.

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.

In Displaying The Psychology Of Your Characters, Minute Particulars Are Essential. God Save Us From Vague Generalizations!

Ivanov: Once I Worked Hard And Thought A Lot But I Never Got Tired; Now I Do Nothing And Think Of Nothing, But I'm Tired In Body And Spirit. My Conscience Aches Day And Night, I Feel Deeply Guilty But I Don't Understand Where I Am Actually At Fault. And Add To That My Wife's Illness, My Lack Of Money, The Constant Bickering, Gossip, Unnecessary Conversations, That Stupid Borkin... My Home Has Become Loathsome To Me And I Find Living There Worse Than Torture.

A Man Wants Nothing So Badly As A Gooseberry Farm.

The Teacher Must Be An Actor, An Artist,passionately In Love With His Work.

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

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

When Performing An Autopsy, Even The Most Inveterate Spiritualist Would Have To Question Where The Soul Is.

In My Head There Is A Whole Army Of People Asking To Be Let Out And Waiting For The Word Of Command.

No Psychologist Should Pretend To Understand What He Does Not Understand... Only Fools And Charlatans Know Everything And Understand Nothing.

Write About This Man Who, Drop By Drop, Squeezes The Slave's Blood Out Of Himself Until He Wakes One Day To Find The Blood Of A Real Human Being--not A Slave's--coursing Through His Veins.

The Wealthy Man Is Not He Who Has Money, But He Who Has The Means To Live In The Luxurious State Of Early Spring.

The University Brings Out All Abilities, Including Incapability.

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

Wisdom.... Comes Not From Age, But From Education And Learning.

Anyone Who Says The Artist's Field Is All Answers And No Questions Has Never Done Any Writing Or Had Any Dealings With Imageryyou Are Confusing Two Concepts: Answering The Questions And Formulating Them Correctly. Only The Latter Is Required Of An Author.

One Had Better Not Rush, Otherwise Dung Comes Out Rather Than Creative Work.

All The Great Sages Are As Despotic As Generals, And As Ignorant And As Indelicate As Generals, Because They Feel Secure Of Impunity.

Man Will Become Better When You Show Him What He Is Like.

God's World Is A Good Place. The One Thing Not Good In It Is We. How Little Justice And Humility There Is In Us. How Little We Understand True Patriotism!

It Is Uncomfortable To Ask Condemned People About Their Sentences Just As It Is Awkward To Ask Wealthy People Why They Need So Much Money, Why They Use Their Wealth So Poorly, And Why They Don't Just Get Rid Of It When They Recognize That It Is The Cause Of Their Unhappiness.

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

To Dine, Drink Champagne, Raise A Racket And Make Speeches About The People's Consciousness, The People's Conscience, Freedom Andso Forth While Servants In Tails Are Scurrying Around Your Table, Just Like Serfs, And Out In The Severe Cold On The Street Await Coachmen--this Is The Same As Lying To The Holy Spirit.

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.

You Look At Any Poetic Creature: Muslin, Ether, Demigoddess, Millions Of Delights; Then You Look Into The Soul And Find The Most Ordinary Crocodile!

Everyone Has The Same God; Only People Differ.

Neither I Nor Anyone Else Knows What A Standard Is. We All Recognize A Dishonorable Act, But Have No Idea What Honor Is.

Capital Punishment Kills Immediately, Whereas Lifetime Imprisonment Does So Slowly. Which Executioner Is More Humane? The One Who Kills You In A Few Minutes, Or The One Who Wrests Your Life From You In The Course Of Many Years?

The Illusion Which Exalts Us Is Dearer To Us Than Ten Thousand Truths.

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.

Dear, Sweet, Unforgettable Childhood! Why Does This Irrevocable Time, Forever Departed, Seem Brighter, More Festive And Richer Than It Actually Was?

I Think Human Beings Must Have Faith Or Must Look For Faith, Otherwise Our Life Is Empty, Empty. To Live And Not To Know Why The Cranes Fly, Why Children Are Born, Why There Are Stars In The Sky. You Must Know Why You Are Alive, Or Else Everything Is Nonsense, Just Blowing In The Wind.

Art, Especially The Stage, Is An Area Where It Is Impossible To Walk Without Stumbling.

The Stupider The Peasant, The Better The Horse Understands Him.

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

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

Silence Accompanies The Most Significant Expressions Of Happiness And Unhappiness: Those In Love Understand One Another Best When Silent, While The Most Heated And Impassioned Speech At A Graveside Touches Only Outsiders, But Seems Cold And Inconsequential To The Widow And Children Of The Deceased.

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.

I'm In Mourning For My Life.

But If You Had Asked Him What His Work Was, He Would Look Candidly And Openly At You With His Large Bright Eyes Through His Gold Pincenez, And Would Answer In A Soft, Velvety, Lisping Baritone: "my Work Is Literature."

I Myself Smoke, But My Wife Asked Me To Speak Today On The Harmfulness Of Tobacco, So What Can I Do? If It's Tobacco, Then Let It Be Tobacco.

Here I Am With You & Yet Not For A Single Moment Do I Forget That There's An Unfinished Novel Waiting For Me.

An Artist's Flair Is Sometimes Worth A Scientist's Brains.

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

Try To Reason About Love, And You Will Lose Your Reason.

I Do Not Know Why One Should Not Hunt Two Hares Even In The Literal Sense....

To Judge Between Good Or Bad, Between Successful And Unsuccessful Would Take The Eye Of A God.

Hypocrisy Is A Revolting, Psychopathic State.

My Own Experience Is That Once A Story Has Been Written, One Has To Cross Out The Beginning And The End. It Is There That We Authors Do Most Of Our Lying.

I Have No Will Of My Own. Never Did. Limp And Lily-livered, I Always Obey - Is It Possible That's Attractive To Women?

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.

Great Jove Angry Is No Longer Jove.

Our Pride And Self-importance Are European, While Our Development And Actions Are Asiatic.

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

There Are People Whom Even Children's Literature Would Corrupt. They Read With Particular Enjoyment The Piquant Passages In The Psalter And In The Wisdom Of Solomon.

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!

Dear, Sweet, Unforgettable Childhood!

Love Is A Scandal Of The Personal Sort.

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.

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.

My Holy Of Holies Is The Human Body.

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.

Life Does Not Agree With Philosophy: There Is No Happiness That Is Not Idleness, And Only What Is Useless Is Pleasurable.

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

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

Humankind Has Understood History As A Series Of Battles Because, To This Day, It Regards Conflict As The Central Facet Of Life.

We Go To Great Pains To Alter Life For The Happiness Of Our Descendants And Our Descendants Will Say As Usual: Things Used To Be So Much Better, Life Today Is Worse Than It Used To Be.

And What Does It Mean -- Dying? Perhaps Man Has A Hundred Senses, And Only The Five We Know Are Lost At Death, While The Other Ninety-five Remain Alive.

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

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

Sometimes We Go To A Play And After The Curtain Has Been Up Five Minutes We Have A Sense Of Being Able To Settle Back In The Arms Of The Playwright. Instinctively We Know That The Playwright Knows His Business.

A Litterateur Is Not A Confectioner, Not A Dealer In Cosmetics, Not An Entertainer. . . . He Is Just Like An Ordinary Reporter. What Would You Say If A Newspaper Reporter, Because Of His Fastidiousness Or From A Wish To Give Pleasure To His Readers, Were To Describe Only Honest Mayors, High-minded Ladies, And Virtuous Railroad Contractors.

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.

How Unbearable At Times Are People Who Are Happy, People For Whom Everything Works Out.

There Isn't A Monday That Would Not Cede Its Place To Tuesday.

The Time Has Come For Writers, Especially Those Who Are Artists, To Admit That In This World One Cannot Make Anything Out, Just As Socrates Once Admitted It, Just As Voltaire Admitted It.

If Our Life Has A Meaning, An Aim, It Has Nothing To Do With Our Personal Happiness, But Something Wiser And Greater.

Nothing Better Forges A Bond Of Love, Friendship Or Respect Than Common Hatred Toward Something.

If You Wish Women To Love You Be Original; I Know A Man Who Used To Wear Felt Boots Summer And Winter & Women Fell In Love With Him.

I Observed That After Marriage People Cease To Be Curious.

Only During Hard Times Do People Come To Understand How Difficult It Is To Be Master Of Their Feelings And Thoughts.

A Hungry Dog Believes In Nothing But Meat.

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.

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.

..when One Has No Real Life, One Lives By Mirages. It's Still Better Than Nothing.

Fine. Since The Tea Is Not Forthcoming, Let's Have A Philosophical Conversation.

Death Can Only Be Profitable: There's No Need To Eat, Drink, Pay Taxes, Offend People, And Since A Person Lies In A Grave For Hundreds Or Thousands Of Years, If You Count It Up The Profit Turns Out To Be Enormous.

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.

A Person Loves To Talk About His Illnesses Although That Is The Least Interesting Part Of His Life.

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

What's The Use Of Talking? You Can See For Yourself That This Is A Barbarous Country; The People Have No Morals; And The Boredom!

The Past,' He Thought, 'is Linked With The Present By An Unbroken Chain Of Events Flowing One Out Of Another.' And It Seemed To Him That He Had Just Seen Both Ends Of That Chain; That When He Touched One End The Other Quivered.

Watching A Woman Make Russian Pancakes, You Might Think That She Was Calling On The Spirits Or Extracting From The Batter The Philosopher's Stone.

Wherever There Is Degeneration And Apathy, There Also Is Sexual Perversion, Cold Depravity, Miscarriage, Premature Old Age, Grumbling Youth, There Is A Decline In The Arts, Indifference To Science, And Injustice In All Its Forms.

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.

By Nature Servile, People Attempt At First Glance To Find Signs Of Good Breeding In The Appearance Of Those Who Occupy More Exalted Stations.

This Man, Who For Twenty-five Years Has Been Reading And Writing About Art, And In All That Time Has Never Understood Anything About Art, Has For Twenty-five Years Been Hashing Over Other People's Ideas About Realism, Naturalism And All That Nonsense; For Twenty-five Years He Has Been Reading And Writing About What Intelligent People Already Know And About What Stupid People Don't Want To Know--which Means That For Twenty-five Years He's Been Taking Nothing And Making Nothing Out Of It. And With It All, What Conceit! What Pretension!

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.

What A Delight It Is To Respect People!

When A Person Hasn't In Him That Which Is Higher And Stronger Than All External Influences, It Is Enough For Him To Catch A Good Cold In Order To Lose His Equilibrium And Begin To See An Owl In Every Bird, To Hear A Dog's Bark In Every Sound.

You Will Not Become A Saint Through Other People's Sins.

Flies Purify The Air, And Plays - The Morals.

Oh, Dreams! In One Night, Lying With One's Eyes Shut, One May Sometimes Live Through More Than Ten Years Of Happiness.

In Short Stories It Is Better To Say Not Enough Than To Say Too Much, Because, Because--i Don't Know Why.

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Grover Cleveland

Dag Hammarskjold

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