Anton Chekhov Quotes About Lying

Quotes about: Lying

• You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you.

  Anton Chekhov

  Horse, Lying, Taken

  Anton Chekhov (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated)”, p.2020, Delphi Classics

• 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.

  Anton Chekhov

  Lying, Writing, Stories

• Lying is the same as alcoholism. Liars prevaricate even on their deathbeds.

  Anton Chekhov

  Liars, Lying, Alcoholism

  Letter to A. N. Pleshcheev, October 9, 1888.

• [In] death at least there would be one profit; it would no longer be necessary to eat, to drink, to pay taxes, or to [offend] others; and as a man lies in his grave not one year, but hundreds and thousands of years, the profit was enormous. The life of man was, in short, a loss, and only his death a profit.

  Anton Chekhov

  Death, Lying, Loss

  Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1929). “The Works of Anton Chekhov”

• A sweet lie is more gracious for us than a virulent but real truth.

  Anton Chekhov

  Sweet, Real, Lying

• Oh, dreams! In one night, lying with one's eyes shut, one may sometimes live through more than ten years of happiness.

  Anton Chekhov

  Happiness, Dream, Lying

  Anton Chekhov (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated)”, p.951, Delphi Classics

• Probably nature itself gave man the ability to lie so that in difficult and tense moments he could protect his nest, just as do the vixen and wild duck.

  Anton Chekhov

  Lying, Men, Ducks

  "Difficult People". Short story by Anton Chekhov, 1886.

• Just as I shall lie alone in the grave, so, in essence, do I live alone.

  Anton Chekhov

  Lying, Essence, Graves

• 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.

  Anton Chekhov

  Love, Lying, Men

  "Note-Book of Anton Chekhov". Book by Anton Chekhov, 1921.

• 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.

  Anton Chekhov

  Lying, People, Hypocrisy

• 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.

  Anton Chekhov

  Lying, Sleep, Sea

  "The Lady with the Dog". Short story by Anton Chekhov, 1899.

• Not everyone knows how to be silent or to leave in good time. It happens that even people of good breeding fail to notice that their presence provokes in the weary or preoccupied host a feeling akin to hatred, and that this feeling is tensely concealed and covered up with lies.

  Anton Chekhov

  Lying, Covered Up, People

• 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 . . . one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story.

  Anton Chekhov

  Wall, Lying, Gun

• Even while lying, you'll be believed if you speak with authority.

  Anton Chekhov

  Lying, Speak, Authority

• The secret of boring people lies in telling them everything.

  Anton Chekhov

  Lying, People, Boredom

• 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.

  Anton Chekhov

  Wise, Lying, Men

• 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.

  Anton Chekhov

  Lying, Years, People

  "Rothschild's Violin". Short story by Anton Chekhov, 1894.

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