"The more refined the more unhappy.

Life does not agree with philosophy: there is no happiness which is not idleness and only the useless is pleasurable.

The grandfather is given fish to eat, and if it does not poison him and he remains alive, then all the family eat it.

A correspondence. A young man dreams of devoting himself to literature and constantly writes to his father about it; at last he gives up the civil service, goes to Petersburg, and devotes himself to literature -- he becomes a censor.

(...)

A large fat barmaid -- a cross between a pig and white sturgeon.

(...)

New literary forms always produce new forms of life and that is why they are so revolting to the conservative human mind.

(...)

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

from Notebook of Anton Chekhov
(trans. by S.S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf)