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Quotes by Dramatist
"Ivanov: Once I worked hard and thought a lot but I never got tired; now I do nothing and think of nothing, but I'm tired in body and spirit. My conscience aches day and night, I feel deeply guilty but I don't understand where I am actually at fault. And add to that my wife's illness, my lack of money, the constant bickering, gossip, unnecessary conversations, that stupid Borkin... My home has become loathsome to me and I find living there worse than torture."
5
"Love does not traffic in a marketplace, nor use a huckster's scales. Its joy, like the joy of the intellect, is to feel itself alive. The aim of Love is to love: no more, and no less. You were my enemy: such an enemy as no man ever had. I had given you all my life, and to gratify the lowest and most contemptible of all human passions, hatred and vanity and greed, you had thrown it away. In less than three years you had entirely ruined me in every point of view. For my own sake there was nothing for me to do but to love you."
5
"It's easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook."
5
"These people have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and wild herbs."
5
"For the salvation of his soul the Muslim digs a well. It would be a fine thing if each of us were to leave behind a school, or a well, or something of the sort, so that life would not pass by and retreat into eternity without a trace."
5
"The art of government is the organization of idolatry."
5
"Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it."
5
"Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy."
5
"Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people."
5
"Niagara ... is the first disappointment in the married life of many Americans who spend their honeymoon there."
5
"Anybody can make history, only a great man can write it."
5
"Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching."
5
"I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked."
5
"The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to one's office for a job."
5
"It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible not the invisible."
5
"Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes."
5
"To die, is to be banish'd from myself; And Silvia is myself: banish'd from her, Is self from self: a deadly banishment! What light is light, if Silvia be not seen? What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by? Unless it be to think that she is by, And feed upon the shadow of perfection.Except I be by Silvia in the night, There is no music in the nightingale; Unless I look on Silvia in the day, There is no day for me to look upon; She is my essence, and I leave to be, If I be not by her fair influence Foster'd, illumin'd, cherish'd, kept alive."
5
"He eats nothing but doves, love, and that breeds hot blood, and hot blood beget hot thoughts, and hot thoughts beget hot deeds, and hot deeds is love."
5
"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
5
"Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals."
5
"Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they're better."
5
"When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth."
5
"When I was a young man I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. I didn't want to be a failure so I did ten times more work."
5
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