We fret ourselves to reform life, in order that posterity may be happy, and posterity will say as usual: "In the past it used to be better, the present is worse than the past."

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We go to great pains to alter life for the happiness of our descendants and our descendants will say as usual: things used to be so much better, life today is worse than it used to be.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Anton Chekhov (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.