The best Uncle Vanya quotes

What must human beings be, to destroy what they can never create?

God alone knows what our real business in life is.

- Astrov

A woman can only become a man's friend after having first been his acquaintance and then his beloved—then she becomes his friend.

Men may forget, but God will remember.

- Marina

And the existence is tedious, anyway; it is a senseless, dirty business, this life.

If you could only see your face, your gestures! Oh, how tedious your life must be.

If I'd had a normal life I might have been a Schopenhauer or a Dostoevsky.

- Vanya

One hundred years from now, the people who come after us, for whom our lives are showing the way--will they think of us kindly? Will they remember us with a kind word? I wish to God I could think so.