"It is not only the prisoners who grow coarse and hardened from corporeal punishment, but those as well who perpetrate the act or are present to witness it."

Anton Chekhov Literature See all quotes by Anton Chekhov →

React to this quote

More by Anton Chekhov

“The world is a fine place. The only thing wrong with it is us. How little justice and humility there is in us, how poorly we understand patriotism!”

“Despicable means used to achieve laudable goals render the goals themselves despicable.”

“Writers are as jealous as pigeons.”

“It’s worth living abroad to study up on genteel and delicate manners. The maid smiles continuously; she smiles like a duchess on a stage, while at the same time it is clear from her face that she is exhausted from overwork.”

“Moscow is a city that has much suffering ahead of it.”

“There are no lower or higher or median moralities. There is only one morality, and it is precisely the one that was given to us during the time of Jesus Christ and that stops me, you and Barantsevich from stealing, offending others, lying etc.”

Resonant Thoughts

"The assertion of the priority of contemporaneity, the celebration of the present, defines the politics of periodization. It is either a matter of our present, defined as the vanguard of historical pro…"

— Russell Berman

Education1950

#time

"I will be double-damned to a better Hell than Hellpepper Planet if I will have my ending here in peace! Peace be not the end of my epic! An epic is already failed if it have an ending. I don't care ho…"

— R. A. Lafferty

Literature1914–2002

#time

"They originated in the years 1911-14, in one of the loneliest times of my life, during which an agonizing restlessness drove me out onto the streets day and night, which were filled with people and ca…"

— Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Art1880–1938

#time

"One of the marks of maturity is the need for solitude: a city should not merely draw men together in many varied activities, but should permit each person to find, near at hand, moments of seclusion a…"

— Lewis Mumford

Philosophy1895–1990

#time