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"What is there flattering, amusing, or edifying in their carving your name on a tombstone, then time rubbing off the inscription together with the gilding?"
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"The fact that you have just buried your parent or parents and/or sibling or siblings does not make you less likely to die today."

"Silver's sweet and gold's our mother, but once you're dead they're worth less than that last shit you take as you lie dying."

"I think Bonzo died. I dreamed about it last night. I remembered the way he looked after I jammed his face with my head. I think I must have pushed his nose back into his brain. The blood was coming out of his eyes. I think he was dead right then."

"You don't need a sad soul to feel the beauty of a dead graveJust stay with the pale moonwhen darkness wants the night to be brave."

"To die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier."

"Tombstones covered the dale, the smooth marble surfaces bright. She had spent days here as a teenager, though not out of any awareness of mortality. Like every adolescent, she intended to live forever."

"When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He'll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He'll say: where did everybody go? And that's how it will be. What's wrong with that?"

"Rest in Peace?' Why that phrase? That's the most ridiculous phrase I've ever heard! You die, and they say 'Rest in Peace!'. Why would one need to 'rest' when they're dead?! I spent thousands of years of world history resting. While Agamemnon was leading his ships to Troy, I was resting. While Ovid was seducing women at the chariot races, I was resting. While Jeanne d'Arc was hallucinating, I was resting. I wait until airplanes are scuttling across the sky to burst out onto the scene, and I'm only going to be here for a short while, so when I die, I certainly won't need to rest again! Not while more adventures of the same kind are going on."

"Welcome death quoth the rat when the trap fell."
Explore more quotes by Anton Chekhov

"The sufferings which may be observed nowadays - they are so widespread and so vast - but people speak nevertheless about a certain moral improvement which society has achieved."

"Happiness does not exist, nor should it, and if there is any meaning or purpose in life, they are not in our peddling little happiness, but in something reasonable and grand. Do good!"

"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."

"As a rule, however fine and deep a phrase may be, it only affects the indifferent, and cannot fully satisfy those who are happy or unhappy; that is why dumbness is most often the highest expression of happiness or unhappiness; lovers understand each other better when they are silent, and a fervent, passionate speech delivered by the grave only touches outsiders, while to the widow and children of the dead man it seems cold and trivial."

"The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak different languages but the same flame burns in them all. Oh, if you only knew what unearthly happiness my soul feels now from being able to understand them."

"Ivanov: With a heavy head, with a slothful spirit, exhausted, overstretched, broken, without faith, without love, without a goal, I roam like a shadow among men and I don't know who I am, why I'm alive, what I want. And I now think that love is nonsense, that embraces are cloying, that there's no sense in work, that song and passionate speeches are vulgar and outmoded. And everywhere I take with me depression, chill boredom, dissatisfaction, revulsion from life... I am destroyed, irretrievably!"

"Science and art,... they seek the truth and the meaning of life, they seek God, [and] the soul, and when they are harnessed to passing needs and activities,... then they only complicate and encumber life."
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