Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (607 page)

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Mitya and Katya were told that their papa blasted rocks in the quarry. They wanted to blow up their cross grandpapa, so they took a pound of powder from their father’s room, put it in a bottle, inserted a wick, and placed it under their grandfather’s chair, when he was dozing after dinner; but soldiers marched by with the band playing — and this was the only thing that prevented them from carrying out their plan.

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Sleep is a marvelous mystery of Nature which renews all the powers of man, bodily and spiritual. (Bishop Porphyrius Usgensky, “The Book of My Life.”)

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A woman imagines that she has a peculiar, exceptional constitution, whose ailments are different from other people’s and which cannot stand ordinary medicine. She thinks that her son is unlike other people’s sons, that he has to be brought up differently. She believes in principles, but she thinks that they apply to every one but herself, because she lives in exceptional circumstances. The son grows up, and she tries to find an exceptional wife for him. Those around her suffer. The son turns out a scoundrel.

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Poor long-suffering art!

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A man whose madness takes the form of an idea that he is a ghost: walks at night.

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A sentimental man, like Lavrov, has moments of pleasant emotion and makes the request: “Write a letter to my auntie in Briansk; she is a darling….”

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There is a bad smell in the barn: ten years ago haymakers slept the night in it and ever since it smells.

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An officer at a doctor’s. The money on a plate. The doctor can see in the looking-glass that the patient takes twenty-five roubles from the plate and pays him with it.

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Russia is a nobody’s country!

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Z. who is always saying banal things: “With the agility of a bear,” “on one’s favorite corn.”

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A savings bank: the clerk, a very nice man, looks down on the bank, considers it useless — and yet goes on working there.

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A radical lady, who crosses herself at night, is secretly full of prejudice and superstition, hears that in order to be happy one should boil a black cat by night. She steals a cat and tries to boil it.

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A publisher’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Tears, a speech: “I offer ten roubles to the literary fund, the interest to be paid to the poorest writer, but on condition that a special committee is appointed to work out the rules according to which the distribution shall be made.”

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He wore a blouse and despised those who wore frock coats. A stew of trousers.

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The ice cream is made of milk in which, as it were, the patients bathed.

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It was a grand forest of timber, but a Government Conservator was appointed, and in two years time there was no more timber; the caterpillar pest.

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X.: “Choleraic disorder in my stomach started with the cider.”

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Of some writers each work taken separately is brilliant, but taken as a whole they are indefinite; of others each particular work represents nothing outstanding; but, for all that, taken as a whole they are distinct and brilliant.

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N. rings at the door of an actress; he is nervous, his heart beats, at the critical moment he gets into a panic and runs away; the maid opens the door and sees nobody. He returns, rings again — but has not the courage to go in. In the end the porter comes out and gives him a thrashing.

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A gentle quiet schoolmistress secretly beats her pupils, because she believes in the good of corporal punishment.

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N.: “Not only the dog, but even the horses howled.”

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N. marries. His mother and sister see a great many faults in his wife; they are distressed, and only after four or five years realize that she is just like themselves.

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The wife cried. The husband took her by the shoulders and shook her, and she stopped crying.

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After his marriage everything — politics, literature, society — did not seem to him as interesting as they had before; but now every trifle concerning his wife and child became a most important matter.

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“Why are thy songs so short?” a bird was once asked. “Is it because thou art short of breath?”

“I have very many songs and I should like to sing them all.”

(A. Daudet.)

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The dog hates the teacher; they tell it not to bark at him; it looks, does not bark, only whimpers with rage.

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Faith is a spiritual faculty; animals have not got it; savages and uncivilized people have merely fear and doubt. Only highly developed natures can have faith.

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Death is terrible, but still more terrible is the feeling that you might live for ever and never die.

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The public really loves in art that which is banal and long familiar, that to which they have grown accustomed.

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A progressive, educated, young, but stingy school guardian inspects the school every day, makes long speeches there, but does not spend a penny on it: the school is falling to pieces, but he considers himself useful and necessary. The teacher hates him, but he does not notice it. The harm is great. Once the teacher, unable to stand it any longer, facing him with anger and disgust, bursts out swearing at him.

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Teacher
: “Poushkin’s centenary should not be celebrated; he did nothing for the church.”

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Miss Guitarov (actress).

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If you wish to become an optimist and understand life, stop believing what people say and write, observe and discover for yourself.

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Husband and wife zealously followed X.’s idea and built up their life according to it as if it were a formula. Only just before death they asked themselves: “Perhaps that idea is wrong? Perhaps the saying ‘mens sana in corpore sano’ is untrue?”

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I detest: a playful Jew, a radical Ukrainian, and a drunken German.

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The University brings out all abilities, including stupidity.

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Taking into consideration, dear sir, as a result of this view, dear sir….

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The most intolerable people are provincial celebrities.

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Owing to our flightiness, because the majority of us are unable and unaccustomed to think or to look deeply into life’s phenomena, nowhere else do people so often say: “How banal!” nowhere else do people regard so superficially, and often contemptuously other people’s merits or serious questions. On the other hand nowhere else does the authority of a name weigh so heavily as with us Russians, who have been abased by centuries of slavery and fear freedom….

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A doctor advised a merchant to eat soup and chicken. The merchant thought the advice ironical. At first he ate a dinner of botvinia and pork, and then, as if recollecting the doctor’s orders, ordered soup and chicken and swallowed them down too, thinking it a great joke.

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Father Epaminond catches fish and puts them in his pocket; then, when he gets home, he takes out a fish at a time, as he wants it, and fries it.

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The nobleman X. sold his estate to N. with all the furniture according to an inventory, but he took away everything else, even the oven dampers, and after that N. hated all noblemen.

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The rich, intellectual X., of peasant origin, implored his son: — “Mike, don’t get out of your class. Be a peasant until you die, do not become a nobleman, nor a merchant, nor a bourgeois. If, as you say, the Zemstvo officer now has the right to inflict corporal punishment on peasants, then let him also have the right to punish you.” He was proud of his peasant origin, he was even haughty about it.

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They celebrated the birthday of an honest man. Took the opportunity to show off and praise one another. Only towards the end of the dinner they suddenly discovered that the man had not been invited; they had forgotten.

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A gentle quiet woman, getting into a temper, says: “If I were a man, I would just bash your filthy mug.”

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A Mussulman for the salvation of his soul digs a well. It would be a pleasant thing if each of us left a school, a well, or something like that, so that life should not pass away into eternity without leaving a trace behind it.

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We are tired out by servility and hypocrisy.

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N. once had his clothes torn by dogs, and now, when he pays a call anywhere, he asks: “Aren’t there any dogs here?”

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A young pimp, in order to keep up his powers, always eats garlic.

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School guardian. Widowed priest plays the harmonium and sings: “Rest with the saints.”

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In July the red bird sings the whole morning.

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“A large selection of
cigs”
— so read X. every day when he went down the street, and wondered how one could deal only in
cigs
and who wanted them. It took him thirty years before he read it correctly: “A large selection of cigars.”

[Footnote 1:
Cigs
in Russian is a kind of fish.]

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A bride to an engineer: a dynamite cartridge filled with one-hundred-rouble notes.

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“I have not read Herbert Spencer. Tell me his subjects. What does he write about?” “I want to paint a panel for the Paris exhibition. Suggest a subject.” (A wearisome lady.)

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The idle, so-called governing, classes cannot remain long without war. When there is no war they are bored, idleness fatigues and irritates them, they do not know what they live for; they bite one another, try to say unpleasant things to one another, if possible with impunity, and the best of them make the greatest efforts not to bore the others and themselves. But when war comes, it possesses all, takes hold of the imagination, and the common misfortune unites all.