I can’t accept “our nervous age,” since mankind has been nervous during every age. Whoever fears nervousness should turn into a sturgeon or smelt; if a sturgeon makes a stupid mistake, it can only be one: to end up on a hook, and then in a pan in a pastry shell.
ATTRIBUTION:
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904), Russian author, playwright. letter, February 28, 1895, to. E.M. Savrova-Yust. Complete Works and Letters in Thirty Volumes, Letters, vol. 6, p. 30, “Nauka” (1976).
