Uncle Vanya quotes

All these years that you have known me I have not had one free day. I may well look old!

And the life in itself is tedious, stupid, dirty.

… This life swallows one up completely. There are none but queer people about one—they are a queer lot, all of them—and when one has lived two or three years among them, by degrees one turns queer too, without noticing it.

It’s inevitable twisting his long moustache. Ough, what a huge moustache I’ve grown … a stupid moustache. … I’ve turned into a queer fish, nurse. I haven’t grown stupid yet, thank God! My brains are in their place, but my feelings are somehow blunter.

There is nothing I want, nothing I care about, no one I am fond of

… except you, perhaps—I am fond of you kisses her on the head. I had a nurse like you when I was a child.

But I want to talk.

But we have been talking and talking for fifty years and reading pamphlets. It’s about time to leave off.

You don’t like listening when I speak; I don’t know why. Forgive my saying so, Jean, but you have so changed in the course of the last year that I hardly know you. You used to be a man of definite principles, of elevating ideas.

Now I am forty-seven. Till last year I tried, like you, to blind myself with all your pedantic rubbish on purpose to avoid seeing life as it is—and thought I was doing the right thing. And now, if only you knew!

I can’t sleep at night for vexation, for rage that I so stupidly wasted the time when I might have had everything from which my age now shuts me out.

Uncle Vanya, it’s so dreary!

What a fine day! It’s not too hot.

A fine day to hang oneself!

Telyegin tunes the guitar. Marina walks to and fro near the house, calling a hen.

and all because lazy man has not the sense to stoop down and pick up the fuel from the ground. To Yelena Andreyevna. Am I not right, madam?

One must be an unreflecting savage to burn this beauty in one’s stove, to destroy what we cannot create.

Man is endowed with reason and creative force to increase what has been given him; but hitherto he has not created but destroyed.

To Yelena Andreyevna. Am I not right, madam? One must be an unreflecting savage to burn this beauty in one’s stove, to destroy what we cannot create.

Man is endowed with reason and creative force to increase what has been given him; but hitherto he has not created but destroyed.

There are fewer and fewer forests, the rivers are drying up, the wild creatures are becoming extinct, the climate is ruined, and every day the earth is growing poorer and more hideous. To Voynitsky.

she has got an old husband.” This sympathy for me, oh, how well I understand it! As Astrov said just now, you all recklessly destroy the forests, and soon there will be nothing left on the earth.

In just the same way you recklessly destroy human beings, and soon, thanks to you, there will be no fidelity, no purity, no capacity for sacrifice left on earth!

Why is it you can never look with indifference at a woman unless she is yours? Because—that doctor is right—there is a devil of destruction in all of you.

In just the same way you recklessly destroy human beings, and soon, thanks to you, there will be no fidelity, no purity, no capacity for sacrifice left on earth!

Why is it you can never look with indifference at a woman unless she is yours?

Because—that doctor is right—there is a devil of destruction in all of you. You have no feeling for the woods, nor the birds, nor for women, nor for one another!

He thinks I am disagreeable. Most likely that’s why we are such friends, Ivan Petrovitch, that we are both such tiresome, tedious people. Tiresome! Don’t look at me like that, I don’t like it.

How else can I look at you, since I love you? You are my happiness, my life, my youth!

I know the chances of your returning my feeling are nil, nonexistent, but I want nothing, only let me look at you, listen to your voice. …

I have been told that Turgenev got angina pectoris from gout. I am afraid I may have it. Hateful, detestable old age. Damnation take it!

Since I have grown old I have grown hateful to myself.

And you must all hate the sight of me.

… It ought to be your work to reconcile everyone, and not to grumble.

Reconcile me to myself first!

My precious … bends down and kisses her hand.

The rain will be over directly and everything in nature will be refreshed and sigh with relief. But the storm has brought no relief to me. Day and night the thought that my life has been hopelessly wasted weighs on me like a nightmare.

I have no past, it has been stupidly wasted on trifles, and the present is awful in its senselessness.

Here you have my life and my love! What use to make of them? What am I to do with them? My passion is wasted in vain like a ray of sunshine that has fallen into a pit, and I am utterly lost, too.

I have no past, it has been stupidly wasted on trifles, and the present is awful in its senselessness. Here you have my life and my love! What use to make of them? What am I to do with them?

My passion is wasted in vain like a ray of sunshine that has fallen into a pit, and I am utterly lost, too.

When you talk to me about your love, I feel stupid and don’t know what to say. Forgive me, there is nothing I can say to you is about to go out. Good night.

What do you mean by “already”?

A woman can become a man’s friend only in the following sequence: first agreeable acquaintance, then mistress, then friend.

What? Yes … I must own I am growing vulgar. You see, I am drunk too. As a rule I get drunk like this once a month. When I am in this condition I become coarse and insolent in the extreme.

Age makes no difference.

When one has no real life, one has to live on illusions. It’s better than nothing, anyway.

The hay is all cut, it rains every day, it’s all rotting, and you are living in illusions. You have quite given up looking after things. … I have to work alone, and am quite done up. … Alarmed.

… Your father, who is entirely absorbed in his gout and his books, Uncle Vanya with his melancholy, your grandmother, and your stepmother too. …

Everything ought to be beautiful in a human being: face, and dress, and soul, and ideas.

She is beautiful, there is no denying that, but … You know she does nothing but eat, sleep, walk about, fascinate us all by her beauty—nothing more. She has no duties, other people work for her. … That’s true, isn’t it?

You are dissatisfied with life, then?

I love life as such, but our life, our everyday provincial life in Russia, I can’t endure.

I despise it with every fibre of my being. And as for my own personal life, there is absolutely nothing nice in it, I can assure you.

I love life as such, but our life, our everyday provincial life in Russia, I can’t endure. I despise it with every fibre of my being. And as for my own personal life, there is absolutely nothing nice in it, I can assure you.

You know when you walk through a forest on a dark night, and a light gleams in the distance, you do not notice your weariness, nor the darkness, nor the sharp twigs that lash you in the face.

… I work—as you know—harder than anyone in the district, fate is forever lashing at me; at times I am unbearably miserable, but I have no light in the distance. I expect nothing for myself; I am not fond of my fellow creatures.

Alone.

Nothing is worse than knowing somebody else’s secret and not being able to help.

Musing. He is not in love with her—that’s evident; but why should he not marry her? She is not good-looking, but she would be a capital wife for a country doctor at his age. She is so sensible, so kind and pure-hearted.

Ivan Petrovitch, how could I tell? I am not a practical man, and don’t understand these things. You could have added as much to it as you chose.

Why didn’t I steal? How is it you don’t all despise me because I didn’t steal?

It would have been right and I shouldn’t have been a pauper now!

In agitation. Vanya, my dear soul, don’t, don’t … I am all of a tremble. … Why spoil our good relations? Kisses him. You mustn’t.

For twenty-five years I have been here within these four walls with mother, buried like a mole.

… All our thoughts and feelings belonged to you alone. By day we talked of you and your labours. We were proud of you; with reverence we uttered your name.

I am going away from this hell this very minute screams. I can’t put up with it any longer!

My life is ruined! I had talent, I had courage, I had intelligence!

If I had had a normal life I might have been a Schopenhauer, a Dostoevsky. … Oh, I am talking like an idiot! I am going mad. … Mother, I am in despair! Mother!

You shouldn’t take any notice of that, my dear.

We all live upon God.

Whether it’s you or Sonya or Ivan Petrovitch, none of you sit idle, we all work hard! All of us. … Where is Sonya?