Note-Book of Anton Chekhov Part 2

Fools!"

He had nothing in his soul except recollections of his schooldays.

The French say: "Laid comme un chenille"--as ugly as a caterpillar.

People are bachelors or old maids because they rouse no interest, not even a physical one.

The children growing up talked at meals about religion and laughed at fasts, monks, etc. The old mother at first lost her temper, then, evidently getting used to it, only smiled, but at last she told the children that they had convinced her, that she is now of their opinion. The children felt awkward and could not imagine what their old mother would do without her religion.

There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.

The dog walked in the street and was ashamed of its crooked legs.

The difference between man and woman: a woman, as she grows old gives herself up more and more to female affairs; a man, as he grows old, withdraws himself more and more from female affairs.

That sudden and ill-timed love-affair may be compared to this: you take boys somewhere for a walk; the walk is jolly and interesting--and suddenly one of them gorges himself with oil paint.

The character in the play says to every one: "You've got worms." He cures his daughter of the worms, and she turns yellow.

A scholar, without talent, a blockhead, worked for twenty-four years and produced nothing good, gave the world only scholars as untalented and as narrow-minded as himself. At night he secretly bound books--that was his true vocation: in that he was an artist and felt the joy of it. There came to him a bookbinder, who loved learning and studied secretly at night.

But perhaps the universe is suspended on the tooth of some monster.

Keep to the right, you of the yellow eye!

Do you want to eat? No, on the contrary.

A pregnant woman with short arms and a long neck, like a kangaroo.

How pleasant it is to respect people! When I see books, I am not concerned with how the authors loved or played cards; I see only their marvelous works.

To demand that the woman one loves should be pure is egotistical: to look for that in a woman which I have not got myself is not love, but wors.h.i.+p, since one ought to love one's equals.

The so-called pure childlike joy of life is animal joy.

I cannot bear the crying of children, but when my child cries, I don't hear.

A schoolboy treats a lady to dinner in a restaurant. He has only one rouble, twenty kopecks. The bill comes to four roubles thirty kopecks.

He has no money and begins to cry. The proprietor boxes his ears. He was talking to the lady about Abyssinia.

A man, who, to judge from his appearance, loves nothing but sausages and sauerkraut.

We judge human activities by their goal; that activity is great of which the goal is great.

You drive on the Nevski, you look to the left on the Haymarket; the clouds are the color of smoke, the ball of the setting sun purple--Dante's h.e.l.l!

His income is twenty-five to fifty thousand, and yet out of poverty he shoots himself.

Terrible poverty, desperate situation. The mother a widow, her daughter a very ugly girl. At last the mother takes courage and advises the daughter to go on the streets. She herself when young went on the streets without her husband's knowledge in order to get money for her dresses; she has some experience. She instructs her daughter.

The latter goes out, walks all night; not a single man takes her; she is ugly. A couple of days later, three young rascals on the boulevard take her. She brought home a note which turned out to be a lottery ticket no longer valid.