7
" I reflected how many satisfied, happy people there really are! What a suffocating force it is! You look at life: the insolence and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and brutishness of the weak, incredible poverty all about us, overcrowding, degeneration, drunkenness, hypocrisy, lying... Yet all is calm and stillness in the houses and in the streets; of the fifty thousand living in a town, there s not one who would cry out, who would give vent to his indignation aloud. We see the people going to market for provisions, eating by day, sleeping by night, talking their silly nonsense, getting married, growing old, serenely escorting their dead to the cemetery; but we do not see and we do not hear those who suffer, and what is terrible in life goes on somewhere behind the scenes...Everything is so quiet and peaceful, and nothing protests but mute statistics: so many people gone out of their minds, so many gallons of vodka drunk, so many children dead from malnutrition... And this order of things s evidently necessary; evidently the happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burdens in silence, and without that silence happiness would be impossible. "
― Anton Chekhov , Ward No. 6 and Other Stories
10
" People who have an official, professional relation to other men's sufferings - for instance, judges, police officers, doctors - in course of time, through habit, grow so callous that they cannot, even if they wish it, take any but a formal attitude to their clients; in this respect they are not different from the peasant who slaughters sheep and calves in the back-yard, and does not notice the blood. "
― Anton Chekhov , Ward No. 6 and Other Stories
11
" You're conversant with reality only in theory. And why is it you despise suffering, why don't you ever feel surprise? There's a very simple reason. The vanity of vanities, externals, internals, despising life, suffering and death, the meaning of existence, true happiness...it's the philosophy best suited to a typical lackadaisical Russian. Say you see a peasant beating his wife. Why meddle? Let him beat away, they're both going to die anyway sooner or later. Besides, that peasant is degrading himself with his blows, not the person he's hitting. Getting drunk is stupid, it's not respectable, but you die if you drink and you die if you don't. A peasant woman comes along with toothache. So what? Pain is just the impression of feeling pain, besides which no one one can get through life without sickness and we are all going to die. So let that woman clear out and leave me to my meditations and vodka. "
― Anton Chekhov , Ward No. 6 and Other Stories
17
" О, зачем человек не бессмертен? Зачем мозговые центры и извилины, зачем зрение, речь, самочувствие, гений, если всему этому суждено уйти в почву и в конце концов охладеть вместе с земною корой, а потом миллионы лет без смысла и без цели носиться с землей вокруг солнца? Для того чтобы охладеть и потом носиться, совсем не нужно извлекать из небытия человека с его высоким, почти божеским умом и потом, словно в насмешку, превращать его в глину. "
― Anton Chekhov , Ward No. 6 and Other Stories
20
" О, зачем человек не бессмертен? — думает он. — Зачем мозговые центры и извилины, зачем зрение, речь, самочувствие, гений, если всему этому суждено уйти в почву и, в конце концов, охладеть вместе с земною корой, а потом миллионы лет без смысла и без цели носиться с землей вокруг солнца? "
― Anton Chekhov , Ward No. 6 and Other Stories
