Anton Chekhov Quotes

This time next year,—this time ten years,—this time one hundred years,—probably it will be just as easy as we think it is to understand that glass of water, which now seems so plain and simple. I cannot doubt but that these things, which now seem to us so mysterious, will be no mysteries at all; that the scales will fall from our eyes; that we shall learn to look on things in a different way—when that which is now a difficulty will be the only commonsense and intelligible way of looking at the subject

Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

Space is as infinite as we can imagine, and expanding this perspective is what adjusts humankind focus on conquering our true enemies, the formidable foes: ignorance and limitation.

There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors.

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

How did they know?.

The birth of science was the death of superstition.

Man was sent into the world to be a growing and exhaustless force. The world was spread out around him to be seized and conquered. Realms of infinite truth burst open above him, inviting him to tread those shining coasts along which Newton dropped his plummet, and Herschel sailed,--a Columbus of the skies.

What is the future? What is the past? What are we? What is the magic fluid that surrounds us and conceals the things we most need to know? We live and die in the midst of marvels.

Nature does not reveal all her secrets at once. We imagine we are initiated in her mysteries: we are, as yet, but hanging around her outer courts.

Theory is continually the precursor of truth; we must pass through the twilight and its shade, to arrive at the full and perfect day.

As Arkwright and Whitney were the demi-gods of cotton, so prolific Time will yet bring an inventor to every plant. There is not a property in nature but a mind is born to seek and find it.

There’s a bit of hidden magic in every mistake. The magic is called learning.

There is no such thing as an absolute truth to be discovered.

The main fuel to speed the world's progress is our stock of knowledge, and the brake is our lack of imagination.

Life is filled with secrets. You can't learn them all at once.

The veil is slowly rising, but as regards innumerable questions we must be content to remain in ignorance.

There's tons of magic in the world, and it's all science.

It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of stars-mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere". I too see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? ...What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it.

A book is like a door. You walk through the cover and you don't know what you're going to find.

Truth travels down from the heights of philosophy to the humblest walks of life, and up from the simplest perceptions of an awakened intellect to the discoveries which almost change the face of the world. At every stage of its progress it is genial, luminous, creative.

The imagination is a species of knowledge, knowledge that can take the form of discovery.