Note-Book of Anton Chekhov Part 24

There is not a single criterion which can serve as the measure of the non-existent, of the non-human.

A patriot: "And do you know that our Russian macaroni is better than the Italian? I'll prove it to you. Once at Nice they brought me sturgeon--do you know, I nearly cried." And the patriot did not see that he was only gastronomically patriotic.

A grumbler: "But is turkey food? Is caviare food?"

A very sensible, clever young woman; when she was bathing, he noticed that she had a narrow pelvis and pitifully thin hips--and he got to hate her.

A clock. Yegor the locksmith's clock at one time loses and at another gains exactly as if to spite him; deliberately it is now at twelve and then quite suddenly at eight. It does it out of animosity as though the devil were in it. The locksmith tries to find out the cause, and once he plunges it in holy water.

Formerly the heroes in novels and stories (e.g. Petchorin, Onyeguin) were twenty years old, but now one cannot have a hero under thirty to thirty-five years. The same will soon happen with heroines.

N. is the son of a famous father; he is very nice, but, whatever he does, every one says: "That is very well, but it is nothing to the father." Once he gave a recitation at an evening party; all the performers had a success, but of him they said: "That is very well, but still it is nothing to the father." He went home and got into bed and, looking at his father's portrait, shook his fist at him.

We fret ourselves to reform life, in order that posterity may be happy, and posterity will say as usual: "In the past it used to be better, the present is worse than the past."

My motto: I don't want anything.

When a decent working-man takes himself and his work critically, people call him grumbler, idler, bore; but when an idle scoundrel shouts that it is necessary to work, he is applauded.

When a woman destroys things like a man, people think it natural and everybody understands it; but when like a man, she wishes or tries to create, people think it unnatural and cannot reconcile themselves to it.

When I married, I became an old woman.

He looked down on the world from the height of his baseness.

"Your fiancee is very pretty." "To me all women are alike."

He dreamt of winning three hundred thousand in lottery, twice in succession, because three hundred thousand would not be enough for him.

N., a retired Councillor of State, lives in the country; he is sixty-six. He is educated, liberal-minded, reads, likes an argument.

He learns from his guests that the new coroner Z. walks about with a slipper on one foot and a boot on the other, and lives with another man's wife. N. thinks all the time of Z.; he does nothing but talk about him, how he walks about in one slipper and lives with another man's wife; he talks of nothing else; at last he goes to sleep with his own wife (he has not slept with her for the last eight years), he is agitated and the whole time talks about Z. Finally he has a stroke, his arm and leg are paralyzed--and all this from agitation about Z.

The doctor comes. With him too N. talks about Z. The doctor says that he knows Z., that Z. now wears two boots, his leg being well, and that he has married the lady.

I hope that in the next world I shall be able to look back at this life and say: "Those were beautiful dreams...."

The squire N., looking at the undergraduate and the young girl, the children of his steward Z.: "I am sure Z. steals from me, lives grandly on stolen money, the undergraduate and the girl know it or ought to know it; why then do they look so decent?"

She is fond of the word "compromise," and often uses it; "I am incapable of compromise...." "A board which has the shape of a parallelepiped."

The hereditary honorable citizen Oziaboushkin always tries to make out that his ancestors had the right to the t.i.tle of Count.

"He is a perfect dab at it." "O, O, don't use that expression; my mother is very particular."

I have just married my third husband ... the name of the first was Ivan Makarivitch ... of the second Peter ... Peter ... I have forgotten.

The writer Gvozdikov thinks that he is very famous, that every one knows him. He arrives at S., meets an officer who shakes his hand for a long time, looking with rapture into his face. G. is glad, he too shakes hands warmly.... At last the officer: "And how is your orchestra? Aren't you the conductor?"

Morning; M.'s mustaches are in curl papers.