'Sweet dreams burn me'

"The thief who hung on the cross managed to recover the joy of life and a bold, realizable hope, though he probably had no more than an hour left to live. You still have long years ahead of you, and most likely I will not die as soon as it seems. What if, by a miracle, the present should turn out to be a dream, a terrible nightmare, and we should wake up renewed, pure, strong, proud of our truth? ... Sweet dreams burn me, and I can hardly breathe from excitement. I want terribly to live, I want our life to be holy, high, and solemn, like the heavenly vault. Let us live! The sun does not rise twice a day, and life is not given us twice—hold fast to the remains of your life and save them ..."

—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, "The Story of an Unknown Man" (1892) (trans. Pevear & Volokhonsky 2004)

'you armed yourself with an ironic attitude toward life'

"And your irony? Oh, how well I understand it! Living, free, spirited thought is inquisitive and imperious; for a lazy, idle mind, it is unbearable. To keep it from disturbing your peace, you, like thousands of your peers, hastened while still young to set limits to it; you armed yourself with an ironic attitude toward life, or whatever you want to call it, and your restricted, intimidated thought does not dare jump over the little palisade you have set around it, and when you jeer at the ideas that are supposedly all known to you, you are like a deserter who shamefully runs away from the field of battle but, to stifle his shame, mocks at war and courage. Cynicism stifles pain."

—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, "The Story of an Unknown Man" (1892) (trans. Pevear & Volokhonsky 2004)

'besides the world everyone could see'

... [Vasya] had strikingly keen eyesight. He saw so well that, for him, the dirty brown, empty steppe was always filled with life and content. He had only to peer into the distance to see a fox, a hare, a bustard, or some other animal that keeps away from people. It is not hard to see a fleeing hare or a flying bustard—anyone crossing the steppe has seen that—but it not given to everyone to see wild animals in their home life, when they are not fleeing, not hiding or looking around in alarm. But Vasya could see foxes frolicking, hares washing themselves with their forepaws, bustards spreading their wings, kestrels beating their wings "in place." Thanks to such keen eyesight, besides the world everyone could see, Vasya had another world of his own, inaccessible to anyone else, and probably a very nice one, because when he looked and admired, it was hard not to envy him.

—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, "The Steppe" (1888) (trans. Pevear & Volokhonsky 2004)

'a complete renewal'

[Laevsky] wanted to think over his situation and was afraid to think. It frightened him to admit that the doctor had caught him in the deception he had so long and so thoroughly concealed from himself. Each time he thought of his future, he did not give free rein to his thoughts. He would get on the train and go—that solved the problem of his life, and he did not let his thoughts go any further. Like a faint, far-off light in a field, from time to time the thought glimmered in his head that somewhere, in one of Petersburg's lanes, in the distant future, in order to break with Nadezhda Fyodorovna and pay his debts, he would have to resort to a small lie. He would lie only once, and then a complete renewal would come. And that was good: at the cost of a small lie, he would buy a big truth.

—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, "The Duel" (1891) (trans. Pevear & Volokhonsky 2004)

'raptures over nature'

"But just look at this panorama!" Samoilenko said to him as the horses turned left, and the valley of the Yellow River came into view, and the river itself glistened—yellow, turbid, mad ...

"I don't see anything good in it, Sasha," replied Laevsky. "To constantly go into raptures over nature is to show the paucity of your imagination. All these brooks and cliffs are nothing but trash compared to what my imagination can give me."

The carriages were now driving along the riverbank. The high, mountainous banks gradually converged, the valley narrowed, and ahead was what looked like a gorge; the stony mountain they were driving along had been knocked together by nature out of huge stones, which crushed each other with such terrible force that Samoilenko involuntarily grunted each time he looked at them. The somber and beautiful mountain was cut in places by narrow crevices and gorges that breathed dampness and mysteriousness on the travelers; through the gorges, other mountains could be seen, brown, pink, purple, smoky, or flooded with bright light. From time to time, as they drove past the gorges, they could hear water falling from a height somewhere and splashing against the rocks.

"Ah, cursed mountains," sighed Laevsky, "I'm so sick of them!"

—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, "The Duel" (1891) (trans. Pevear & Volokhonsky 2004)

'what writers of my generation ... have given the world even one drop of alcohol?'

You are a hard drinker and I treated you to sweet lemonade; after downing it wryly, you remark with entire justice that it hasn't an alcoholic kick. That is just what our works haven't got—the kick that would make us drunk and hold us in their grasp, and this you set forth clearly. And why not? ... Let's talk of general causes, if it won't bore you, and let's embrace the whole age. Tell me in all conscience, what writers of my own generation, i.e., people from thirty to forty-five, have given the world even one drop of alcohol? Aren't ... all today's playwrights lemonade? … The causes for it are not to be found in our stupidity or lack of gifts and not in our insolence ... but in a disease which in an artist is worse than syphilis or sexual impotence. Our illness is a lack of “something,” that is the rights of the case, and it means that when you lift the hem of our Muse's gown you will behold an empty void. Bear in mind that writers who are considered immoral or just plain good and who intoxicate us have one very important trait in common: they are going somewhere and call you with them; you sense, not with your mind but with all your being, that they have an aim, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, who had a reason for appearing and alarming the imagination.

—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, letter to Alexie Suvorin dated November 25, 1892, The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov (trans. Lederer 1984)

'the same inner darkness'

... I recalled ... the long, long series of obscure, protracted sufferings I had been observing in this town uninterruptedly since childhood; and it was incomprehensible to me what these sixty thousand inhabitants lived by, why they read the Gospel, why they prayed, why they read books and magazines. What benefit did they derive from all that had been written and said so far, if there was in them the same inner darkness and the same aversion to freedom as a hundred or three hundred years ago? A building contractor builds houses in town all his life, and yet till his dying day he says "galdary" instead of "gallery," and so, too, these sixty thousand inhabitants for generations have been reading and hearing about truth, mercy, and freedom, and yet till their dying day they lie from morning to evening, torment each other, and as for freedom, they fear it and hate it like an enemy.

—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, "My Life" (1896) (trans. Pevear & Volokhonsky 2004)

'A real woman!'

SMIRNOV

That's a woman for you! That's the kind I appreciate! A real woman! Not one of these soft weak females, but a creature of fire, gunpowder, fireworks! I'm almost sorry to have to kill her!

—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, "The Bear" (1888) (trans. Elisaveta Fen 1954)

...that his life was ordinary...

And the thought that he was an ordinary man, and that his life was ordinary, rejoiced and consoled him.

—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, "The Kiss" (1887) (The Modern Library translation, 1932)