WIT AND WISDOM FROM ANTON CHEKHOV

Extracts from the: Note-Book of Anton Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov Translated by S. S. KOTELIANSKY and LEONARD WOOLF, 1921

ANTON CHEKHOV'S DIARY. 1897.

Between "there is a God" and "there is no God" lies a whole vast tract, which the really wise man crosses with great effort. A Russian knows one or other of these two extremes, and the middle tract between them does not interest him; and therefore he usually knows nothing, or very little.

The ease with which Jews change their religion is justified by many on the ground of indifference. But this is not a justification. One has to respect even one's indifference, and not change it for anything, since indifference in a decent man is also a religion.

February 19. 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.

ANTON CHEKHOV'S NOTE-BOOKS (1892-1904)

Mankind has conceived history as a series of battles; hitherto it has considered fighting as the main thing in life.
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Solomon made a great mistake when he asked for wisdom.
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Ordinary hypocrites pretend to be doves; political and literary hypocrites pretend to be eagles. But don't be disconcerted by their aquiline appearance. They are not eagles, but rats or dogs.
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Those who are more stupid and more dirty than we are called the people. The administration classifies the population into taxpayers and non-taxpayers. But neither classification will do; we are all the people and all the best we are doing is the people's work.
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If the Prince of Monaco has a roulette table, surely convicts may play at cards.
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Why did Hamlet trouble about ghosts after death, when life itself is haunted by ghosts so much more terrible?
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A nice man would feel ashamed even before a dog....
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He had nothing in his soul except recollections of his schooldays.
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The French say: "Laid comme un chenille"--as ugly as a caterpillar.
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People are bachelors or old maids because they rouse no interest, not even a physical one.
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There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.
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The dog walked in the street and was ashamed of its crooked legs.
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The difference between man and woman: a woman, as she grows old gives herself up more and more to female affairs; a man, as he grows old, withdraws himself more and more from female affairs.
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But perhaps the universe is suspended on the tooth of some monster.
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How pleasant it is to respect people! When I see books, I am not concerned with how the authors loved or played cards; I see only their marvelous works.
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To demand that the woman one loves should be pure is egotistical: to look for that in a woman which I have not got myself is not love, but worship, since one ought to love one's equals.
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The so-called pure childlike joy of life is animal joy.
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I cannot bear the crying of children, but when my child cries, I don't hear.
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A man, who, to judge from his appearance, loves nothing but sausages and sauerkraut.
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We judge human activities by their goal; that activity is great of which the goal is great.
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Terrible poverty, desperate situation. The mother a widow, her daughter a very ugly girl. At last the mother takes courage and advises the daughter to go on the streets. She herself when young went on the streets without her husband's knowledge in order to get money for her dresses; she has some experience. She instructs her daughter. The latter goes out, walks all night; not a single man takes her; she is ugly. A couple of days later, three young rascals on the boulevard take her. She brought home a note which turned out to be a lottery ticket no longer valid.
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His character is so undeveloped that one can hardly believe that he has been to the University.
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And I dreamt that, as it were, what I considered reality was a dream, and the dream was reality.
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I observed that after marriage people cease to be curious.
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It usually takes as much time to feel happy as to wind up one's watch.
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One should be mentally clear, morally pure, and physically tidy.
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It was said of a certain lady that she had a cat's factory; her lover tortured the cats by treading on their tails.
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A government clerk gave his son a thrashing because he had only obtained five marks in all his subjects at school. It seemed to him not good enough. When he was told that he was in the wrong, that five is the highest mark obtainable, he thrashed his son again--out of vexation with himself.
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The hen sparrow believes that her cock sparrow is not chirping but singing beautifully.
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There has been an increase not in the number of nervous diseases and nervous patients, but in the number of doctors able to study those diseases.
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The more refined the more unhappy.
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Life does not agree with philosophy: there is no happiness which is not idleness and only the useless is pleasurable.
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The grandfather is given fish to eat, and if it does not poison him and he remains alive, then all the family eat it.
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New literary forms always produce new forms of life and that is why they are so revolting to the conservative human mind.
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People love talking of their diseases, although they are the most uninteresting things in their lives.
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Women deprived of the company of men pine, men deprived of the company of women become stupid.
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A student at a village theological school was learning Latin by heart. Every half-hour he runs down to the maids' room and, closing his eyes, feels and pinches them; they scream and giggle; he returns to his book again. He calls it "refreshing oneself."
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Going to Paris with one's wife is like going to Tula[1] with one's samovar. [Footnote 1: Tula is a Russian city where samovars are manufactured.]
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The young do not go in for literature, because the best of them work on steam engines, in factories, in industrial undertakings. All of them have now gone into industry, and industry is making enormous progress.
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Families where the woman is bourgeoise easily breed adventurers, swindlers, and brutes without ideals.
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A professor's opinion: not Shakespeare, but the commentaries on him are the thing.
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Let the coming generation attain happiness; but they surely ought to ask themselves, for what did their ancestors live and for what did they suffer.
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Love, friendship, respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.
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Viciousness is a bag with which man is born.
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A lady looking like a fish standing on its head; her mouth like a slit, one longs to put a penny in it.
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Russians abroad: the men love Russia passionately, but the women don't like her and soon forget her.
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It is easier to ask of the poor than of the rich.
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And she began to engage in prostitution, got used to sleeping on the bed, while her aunt, fallen into poverty, used to lie on the little carpet by her side and jumped up each time the bell rang; when they left, she would say mindingly, with a pathetic grimace; "Something for the chamber-maid." And they would tip her sixpence.
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A man and woman marry because both of them don't know what to do with themselves.
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The power and salvation of a people lie in its intellegentsia, in the intellectuals who think honestly, feel, and can work.
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A man without a mustache is like a woman with a mustache.
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A man who cannot win a woman by a kiss will not win her by a blow.
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For one sensible person there are a thousand fools, and for one sensible word there are a thousand stupid ones; the thousand overwhelms the one, and that is why cities and villages progress so slowly. The majority, the mass, always remain stupid; it will always overwhelm; the sensible man should give up hope of educating and lifting it up to himself; he had better call in the assistance of material force, build railways, telegraphs, telephones--in that way he will conquer and help life forward.
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Really decent people are only to be found amongst men who have definite, either conservative or radical, convictions; so-called moderate men are much inclined to rewards, commissions, orders, promotions.
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One cannot resist evil, but one can resist good.
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Why are the dogs of Constantinople so often described?
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The maid, when she makes the bed, always puts the slippers under the bed close to the wall. The fat master, unable to bear it any longer, gives the maid notice. It turns out that the doctor told her to put the slippers as far as possible under the bed so as to cure the man of his obesity.
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In order to act wisely it is not enough to be wise (Dostoevsky).
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Z. goes to a doctor, who examines him and finds that he is suffering from heart disease. Z. abruptly changes his way of life, takes medicine, can only talk about his disease; the whole town knows that he has heart disease and all the doctors, whom he regularly consults, say that he has got heart disease. He does not marry, gives up amateur theatricals, does not drink, and when he walks does so slowly and hardly breathes. Eleven years later he has to go to Moscow and there he consults a specialist. The latter finds that his heart is perfectly sound. Z. is overjoyed, but he can no longer return to a normal life, for he has got accustomed to going to bed early and to walking slowly, and he is bored if he cannot speak of his disease. The only result is that he gets to hate doctors--that is all.
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A woman is fascinated not by art, but by the noise made by those who have to do with art.
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N., a dramatic critic, has a mistress X., an actress. Her benefit night. The play is rotten, the acting poor, but N. has to praise. He writes briefly: "The play and the leading actress had an enormous success. Particulars to-morrow." As he wrote the last two words, he gave a sigh of relief. Next day he goes to X.; she opens the door, allows him to kiss and embrace her, and in a cutting tone says: "Particulars to-morrow."
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N. mortgages his estate with the Bank of the Nobility at 4 per cent, and then lends the money on mortgage at 12 per cent.
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Z. got tired of having visitors, and he hired a French woman to live in his house as if she were his mistress. This shocked the ladies and he no longer had visitors.
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Sleep is a marvelous mystery of Nature which renews all the powers of man, bodily and spiritual. (Bishop Porphyrius Usgensky, "The Book of My Life.")
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Russia is a nobody's country!
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N. marries. His mother and sister see a great many faults in his wife; they are distressed, and only after four or five years realize that she is just like themselves.
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Faith is a spiritual faculty; animals have not got it; savages and uncivilized people have merely fear and doubt. Only highly developed natures can have faith.
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Death is terrible, but still more terrible is the feeling that you might live for ever and never die.
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The public really loves in art that which is banal and long familiar, that to which they have grown accustomed.
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If you wish to become an optimist and understand life, stop believing what people say and write, observe and discover for yourself.
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I detest: a playful Jew, a radical Ukrainian, and a drunken German.
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The University brings out all abilities, including stupidity.
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The most intolerable people are provincial celebrities.
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Owing to our flightiness, because the majority of us are unable and unaccustomed to think or to look deeply into life's phenomena, nowhere else do people so often say: "How banal!" nowhere else do people regard so superficially, and often contemptuously other people's merits or serious questions. On the other hand nowhere else does the authority of a name weigh so heavily as with us Russians, who have been abased by centuries of slavery and fear freedom....
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A Mussulman for the salvation of his soul digs a well. It would be a pleasant thing if each of us left a school, a well, or something like that, so that life should not pass away into eternity without leaving a trace behind it.
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We are tired out by servility and hypocrisy.
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The idle, so-called governing, classes cannot remain long without war. When there is no war they are bored, idleness fatigues and irritates them, they do not know what they live for; they bite one another, try to say unpleasant things to one another, if possible with impunity, and the best of them make the greatest efforts not to bore the others and themselves. But when war comes, it possesses all, takes hold of the imagination, and the common misfortune unites all.
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An unfaithful wife is a large cold cutlet which one does not want to touch, because some one else has had it in his hands.
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How delightful when on a bright frosty morning a new sleigh with a rug comes to the door.
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A little girl with rapture about her aunt: "She is very beautiful, as beautiful as our dog!"
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The best men leave the villages for the towns, and therefore the villages decline and will continue to decline.
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One of two things: either sit in the carriage or get out of it.
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Love. Either it is a remnant of something degenerating, something which once has been immense, or it is a particle of what will in the future develop into something immense; but in the present it is unsatisfying, it gives much less than one expects.
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Alas, what is terrible is not the skeletons, but the fact that I am no longer terrified by them.
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A storm at sea. Lawyers ought to regard it as a crime.
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He died from fear of cholera.
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If you wish to have little spare time, do nothing.
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He did not eat, he partook of food.
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"To harness slowly but drive rapidly is in the nature of this people," said Bismarck.
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When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters but telegrams.
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When children appear on the scene, then we justify all our weaknesses, our compromises, and our snobbery, by saying: "It's for the children's sake."
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He has a rarefaction of the brain and his brains have leaked into his ears.
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An actress, forty years old, ugly, ate a partridge for dinner, and I felt sorry for the partridge, for it occurred to me that in its life it had been more talented, more sensible, and more honest than that actress.
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Better to perish from fools than to accept praises from them.
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If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.
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Although you may tell lies, people will believe you, if only you speak with authority.
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Our self-esteem and conceit are European, but our culture and actions are Asiatic.
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Every one has something to hide.
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Man will only become better when you make him see what he is like.
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Russia is an enormous plain across which wander mischievous men.
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Man is what he believes.
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There is nothing which history will not justify.
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The horse is a useless and pernicious animal; a great deal of land has to be tilled for it, it accustoms man not to employ his own muscles, it is often an object of luxury; it makes man effeminate. For the future not a single horse.
* * * * *
Everything which the old cannot enjoy is forbidden or considered wrong.
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What empty words these discussions about the rights of women! If a dog writes a work of talent, they will even accept the dog.
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He looked down on the world from the height of his baseness.
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The more stupid the peasant, the better does the horse understands him.