It's easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.
— Anton Chekhov
Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric.
When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can't be cured.
Advertising is the very essence of democracy.
Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.
No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand... Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing.
I promise to be an excellent husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, will not appear every day in my sky.
How unbearable at times are people who are happy, people for whom everything works out.
Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
The University brings out all abilities, including incapability.
If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.
Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
To advise is not to compel.
When an actor has money he doesn't send letters, he sends telegrams.
Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.
The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.
To judge between good or bad, between successful and unsuccessful would take the eye of a God.
Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.
Passion must be concealed in a society where cold reserve and indifference are the signs of good breeding.
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.
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.
The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others.
Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.
We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.
You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.
People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about.
Man is what he believes.
Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.
Reason and justice tell me there's more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism.
People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.
A fiance is neither this nor that: he's left one shore, but not yet reached the other.
When a woman isn't beautiful, people always say, 'You have lovely eyes, you have lovely hair.'
One must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making a mistake.
We learn about life not from plusses alone, but from minuses as well.
All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart stands still.
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.
The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on; science and art are as well.
The sea has neither meaning nor pity.
A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.
There is nothing new in art except talent.
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.
The more refined one is, the more unhappy.
If you cry 'forward', you must without fail make plain in what direction to go.
Only entropy comes easy.
