Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (611 page)

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On the lips of the old I hear either stupidity or malice.

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“Mamma, Pete did not say his prayers.” Pete is woken up, he says his prayers, cries, then lies down and shakes his fist at the child who made the complaint.

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He imagined that only doctors could say whether it is male or female.

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One became a priest, the other a
Dukhobor
, the third a philosopher, and in each case instinctively because no one wants really to work with bent back from morning to night.

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A passion for the word uterine: my uterine brother, my uterine wife, my uterine brother-in-law, etc.

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To Doctor N., an illegitimate child, who has never lived with his father and knew him very little, his bosom friend Z., says with agitation: “You see, the fact of the matter is that your father misses you very much, he is ill and wants to have a look at you.” The father keeps “Switzerland,” furnished apartments. He takes the fried fish out of the dish with his hands and only afterwards uses a fork. The vodka smells rank. N. went, looked about him, had dinner — his only feeling that that fat peasant, with the grizzled beard, should sell such filth. But once, when passing the house at midnight, he looked in at the window: his father was sitting with bent back reading a book. He recognized himself and his own manners.

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As stupid as a gray gelding.

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They teased the girl with castor oil, and therefore she did not marry.

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N. all his life used to write abusive letters to famous singers, actors, and authors: “You think, you scamp,…” — without signing his name.

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When the man who carried the torch at funerals came out in his three-cornered hat, his frock coat with laces and stripes, she fell in love with him.

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A sparkling, joyous nature, a kind of living protest against grumblers; he is fat and healthy, eats a great deal, every one likes him but only because they are afraid of the grumblers; he is a nobody, a Ham, only eats and laughs loud, and that’s all; when he dies, every one sees that he had done nothing, that they had mistaken him for some one else.

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After the inspection of the building, the Commission, which was bribed, lunched heartily, and it was precisely a funeral feast over honesty.

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He who tells lies is dirty.

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At three o’clock in the morning they wake him: he has to go to his job at the railway station, and so every day for the last fourteen years.

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A lady grumbles: “I write to my son that he should change his linen
every Saturday. He replies: ‘Why Saturday, not Monday?’ I answer:
‘Well, all right, let it be Monday.’ And he: ‘Why Monday, not
Tuesday?’ He is a nice honest man, but I get worried by him.”

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A clever man loves learning but is a fool at teaching.

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The sermons of priests, archimandrites, and bishops are wonderfully like one another.

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One remembers the arguments about the brotherhood of man, public good, and work for the people, but really there were no such arguments, one only drank at the University. They write: “One feels ashamed of the men with University degrees who once fought for human rights and freedom of religion and conscience” — but they never fought.

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Every day after dinner the husband threatens his wife that he will become a monk, and the wife cries.

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Mordokhvostov.

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Husband and wife have lived together and quarreled for eighteen years. At last he makes a confession, which was in fact untrue, of having been false to her, and they part to his great pleasure and to the wrath of the whole town.

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A useless thing, an album with forgotten, uninteresting photographs, lies in the corner on a chair; it has been lying there for the last twenty years and no one makes up his mind to throw it away.

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N. tells how forty years ago X., a wonderful and extraordinary man, had saved the lives of five people, and N. feels it strange that every one listened with indifference, that the history of X. is already forgotten, uninteresting….

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They fell upon the soft caviare greedily, and devoured it in a minute.

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In the middle of a serious conversation he says to his little son:
“Button up your trousers.”

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Man will only become better when you make him see what he is like.

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Dove-colored face.

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The squire feeds his pigeons, canaries, and fowls on pepper, acids, and all kinds of rubbish in order that the birds may change their color — and that is his sole occupation: he boasts of it to every visitor.

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They invited a famous singer to recite the Acts of the Apostles at the wedding; he recited it, but they have not paid his fee.

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For a farce: I have a friend by name Krivomordy (crooked face) and he’s all right. Not crooked leg or crooked arm but crooked face: he was married and his wife loved him.

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N. drank milk every day, and every time he put a fly in the glass and then, with the air of a victim, asked the old butler: “What’s that?” He could not live a single day without that.

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She is surly and smells of a vapor bath.

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N. learned of his wife’s adultery. He is indignant, distressed, but hesitates and keeps silent. He keeps silence and ends by borrowing money from Z., the lover, and continues to consider himself an honest man.

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When I stop drinking tea and eating bread and butter, I say: “I have had enough.” But when I stop reading poems or novels, I say: “No more of that, no more of that.”

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A solicitor lends money at a high rate of interest, and justifies himself because he is leaving everything to the University of Moscow.

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A little sexton, with radical views: “Nowadays our fellows crawl out from all sorts of unexpected holes.”

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The squire N. always quarrels with his neighbors who are Molokans; he goes to court, abuses and curses them; but when at last they leave, he feels there is an empty place; he ages rapidly and pines away.

[Footnote 1: Molokans are a religious sect in Russia.]

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Mordukhanov.

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With N. and his wife there lives the wife’s brother, a lachrymose young man who at one time steals, at another tells lies, at another attempts suicide; N. and his wife do not know what to do, they are afraid to turn him out because he might kill himself; they would like to turn him out, but they do not know how to manage it. For forging a bill he gets into prison, and N. and his wife feel that they are to blame; they cry, grieve. She died from grief; he too died some time later and everything was left to the brother who squandered it and got into prison again.

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Suppose I had to marry a woman and live in her house, I would run away in two days, but a woman gets used so quickly to her husband’s house, as though she had been born there.

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Well, you are a Councillor; but whom do you counsel? God forbid that any one should listen to your counsels.

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The little town of Torjok. A sitting of the town council. Subject: the raising of the rates. Decision: to invite the Pope to settle down in Torjok — to choose it as his residence.

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S.’s logic: I am for religious toleration, but against religious freedom; one cannot allow what is not in the strict sense orthodox.

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St. Piony and Epinach. ii March, Pupli 13 m.

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Poetry and works of art contain not what is needed but what people desire; they do not go further than the crowd and they express only what the best in the crowd desire.

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A little man is very cautious; he sends even letters of congratulation by registered post in order to get a receipt.

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Russia is an enormous plain across which wander mischievous men.

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Platonida Ivanovna.

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If you are politically sound, that is enough for you to be considered a perfectly satisfactory citizen; the same thing with radicals, to be politically unsound is enough, everything else will be ignored.

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A man who when he fails opens his eyes wide.

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Ziuzikov.

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A Councillor of State, a respectable man; it suddenly comes out that he has secretly kept a brothel.

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N. has written a good play; no one praises him or is pleased; they all say: “We’ll see what you write next.”

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The more important people came in by the front door, the simple folk by the back door.

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He: “And in our town there lived a man whose name was Kishmish (raisin). He called himself Kishmish, but every one knew that he was Kishmish.”

She (after some thought): “How annoying … if only his name had been
Sultana, but Kishmish!…”

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Blagovospitanny.

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Most honored Iv-Iv-itch!

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How intolerable people are sometimes who are happy and successful in everything.

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They begin gossiping that N. is living with Z.; little by little an atmosphere is created in which a liaison of N. and Z. becomes inevitable.

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