Anton Tschechow Zitate

seite 6

„An der miserablen Qualität unserer Theater ist nicht das Publikum schuld.“

„Das Kleinliche und Schattenhafte überwinden, das uns hindert, frei und glücklich zu sein, hierin besteht das Ziel und der Sinn unseres Daseins.“

„Abscheuliche Mittel, für gute Zwecke eingesetzt, machen auch den Zweck abscheulich.“

„Anständigen im wahren Sinne begegnet man nur unter Menschen, die feste Überzeugungen haben, konservative oder liberale, die so genannten Gemäßigten neigen zu sehr zu Belohnungen, Beihilfen, Kreuzen, Gehaltszulagen.“

„Es ist leicht, rein zu sein, wenn man es fertig bringt, den Teufel zu hassen, den man nicht kennt, und Gott zu lieben, an dem zu zweifeln das Hirn nicht reicht.“

„Das Schlimme ist, dass wir die einfachsten Fragen mit Tricks zu lösen versuchen, darum machen wir sie auch so ungewöhnlich kompliziert. Man muss nach einfachen Lösungen suchen.“

„Ich wünschte mir, ich könnte im Jenseits von diesem Leben denken: Es waren schöne Visionen.“

„Wer mit Güte nichts erreicht, erreicht auch nichts mit Strenge.“

„Eine Erzählung ohne Frau ist eine Maschine ohne Dampf.“

„Eine Kleinigkeit, einverstanden, aber an solchen Kleinigkeiten geht die Welt zugrunde.“

„Gänsefüßchen benutzen zweierlei Arten von Schriftstellern: die ängstlichen und die ohne Talent. Erstere erschrecken vor der eigenen Courage und Originalität, die zweiten, die irgendein Wort in Gänsefüßchen setzen, wollen damit sagen: Sieh mal, Leser, was für ein originelles, kühnes und neues Wort ich gefunden habe!“

„Je höher die Kultur, desto reicher die Sprache.“

„Sattheit enthält, wie jede andere Kraft, immer auch ein bestimmtes Maß an Frechheit, und dies äußert sich vor allem darin, dass der Satte dem Hungrigen Lehren erteilt.“

„Ich habe so lange keinen Champagner mehr getrunken.“

„All das Kleinliche, Trügerische abstreifen, das uns hindert, glücklich zu sein – das ist der Sinn und das Ziel unseres Lebens. Nur vorwärts!.“

„Man muß nun mal leben, auch wenn man's gar nicht will. Die Tage ableben, einen nach dem anderen, arbeiten und alt werden, sterben.“

“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.”