Anton Chekhov on Love

"There is something beautiful, touching and poetic when one person loves more than the other, and the other is indifferent."

"If you wish women to love you, be original; I know a man who used to wear felt boots summer and winter, and women fell in love with him."

"People love talking of their diseases, although they are the most uninteresting things in their lives."

"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."

"By poeticizing love, we imagine in those we love virtues that they often do not possess; this then becomes the source of constant mistakes and constant distress."

"Love is a scandal of the personal sort."

"He who constantly swims in the ocean loves dry land."

"To a heart transformed by love, it is a mandolin."

"I would love to meet a philosopher like Nietzsche on a train or boat and to talk with him all night. Incidentally, I don’t consider his philosophy long-lived. It is not so much persuasive as full of bravura."

"Silence accompanies the most significant expressions of happiness and unhappiness: those in love understand one another best when silent, while the most heated and impassioned speech at a graveside touches only outsiders, but seems cold and inconsequential to the widow and children of the deceased."

"We old bachelors smell like dogs, do we? So be it. But I must take issue with your claim that doctors who treat female illnesses are womanizers and cynics at heart. Gynecologists deal with savage prose the likes of which you have never dreamed of."

"Love is a great thing. It is not by chance that in all times and practically among all cultured peoples love in the general sense and the love of a man for his wife are both called love. If love is often cruel or destructive, the reason lies not in love itself, but in the inequality between people."

"Why do I love him so much, mamma? Why do I feel so sorry for him?" she went on in a quivering voice, and her eyes glistened with tears. "Who is he? What is he like? As light as a little feather, as a little crumb, but I love him; I love him like a real person. Here he can do nothing, he can't talk, and yet I know what he wants with his little eyes."