Top 100 Arnold Bennett Quotes

#1. Jane Austen? I feel that I am approaching dangerous ground. The reputation of Jane Austen is surrounded by cohorts of defenders who are ready to do murder for their sacred cause.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #4186
#2. Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #15715
#3. Most people sleep themselves stupid.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #23592
#4. During a long and varied career as a bachelor, I have noticed that marriage is the death of politeness between a man and a woman.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #60855
#5. And since nothing whatever happens to us outside our own brain; since nothing hurt us or gives us pleasure except within the brain, the supreme importance of being able to control what goes on in that mysterious brain is patent.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #64701
#6. Only people, especially Anglo-Saxons, are so afraid lest joyfulness may somehow be reprehensible that they will never admit it as a lawful and laudable end in itself.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #69383
#7. To my mind the most poignant mystical exhoration ever written is "Be still and know that I am God."

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #69663
#8. One of the chief things which my typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity; they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change - not rest, except in sleep.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #79847
#9. I will never cease advising my friends and enemies to read poetry before anything.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #96031
#10. Until an effort is made to satisfy that wish, the sense of uneasy waiting for something to start which has not started will remain to disturb the peace of the soul.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #107673
#11. The only way to write a great book is to write it with the eyes of a child who sees things for the first time.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #156742
#12. Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #164638
#13. A true friend is one who likes you despite your achievements.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #198044
#14. It is easier to go down a hill than up, but the view is from the top.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #198393
#15. Falsehood often lurks upon the tongue of him, who, by self-praise, seeks to enhance his value in the eyes of others.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #213945
#16. Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #221854
#17. Great wealth may be to its owner a blessing or a curse. Alas! I fear it is too often the latter. It hardens the heart, blunts the finer susceptibilities, and transforms into a fiend what under more favourable circumstances might have been a human being.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #225558
#18. A cause may be inconvenient, but it's magnificent. It's like champagne or high heels, and one must be prepared to suffer for it.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #252568
#19. Well, my deliberate opinion is - it's a jolly strange world.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #288516
#20. I ought to reflect again and again, and yet again, that the beings that I have to steer are just as inevitable in the scheme of evolution as I am myself; have just as much right to be themselves as I am entitled to; and they all deserve from me as much sympathy as I give to myself.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #289416
#21. If you've ever really been poor you remain poor at heart all your life. I've often walked when I could very well afford to take a taxi because I simply couldn't bring myself to waste the shilling it would cost.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #311919
#22. The test of a first-rate work, and a test of your sincerity in calling it a first-rate work, is that you finish it.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #352239
#23. We shall never have more time. We have, and always had, all the time there is. No object is served in waiting until next week or even until tomorrow. Keep going ... Concentrate on something useful.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #375340
#24. Any change, even a change for the better is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #389809
#25. Time is the explicable raw material of everything.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #441717
#26. Readers of a certain class are apt to call good the plot of that story in which "you can't tell what is going to happen next." But in some of the most tedious novels ever written you can't tell what is going to happen next--and you don't care a fig what is going to happen next.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #449042
#27. The most important preliminary to the task of arranging one's life so that one may live fully and comfortably within one's daily budget of 24 hours is the calm realization of the extreme difficulty of the task, of the sacrifices and the endless effort which it demands.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #456064
#28. The entire landscape was illuminated and transformed by these unique pyrotechnics of labour atoning for its grime, and dull, weird sounds, as of the breathings and sighings of gigantic nocturnal creatures, filled the enchanted air.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #464838
#29. The chief beauty about time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your life. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #496845
#30. There is no magic method of beginning ... Take hold of your nerves, and jump.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #513051
#31. Make love to every woman you meet; if you get five per cent of your outlay it's a good investment.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #513797
#32. The proper, wise balancing
of one's whole life may depend upon the
feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #516971
#33. Worry is evidence of an ill-controlled brain; it is merely a stupid waste of time in unpleasantness. If men and women practiced mental calisthenics as they do physical calisthenics, they would purge their brains of this foolishness.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #524367
#34. If a man makes two-thirds of his existence subservient to one-third, for which admittedly he has no absolutely feverish zest, how can he hope to live fully and completely? He cannot.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #561961
#35. The price of justice is eternal publicity.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #564750
#36. The chief beauty about the constant supply of time is that you cannot waste it in advance.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #615129
#37. It is within the experience of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach a certain intensity they are indistinguishable.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #648124
#38. Prepare to live by all means, but for Heaven's sake do not forget to live.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #680562
#39. Without the power to concentrate that
is to say, without the power to dictate to the brain its task and to ensure obedience true life is impossible. Mind control is the first element of a full existence.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #693221
#40. Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #696829
#41. You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #760445
#42. The pleasure of doing a thing in the same way at the same time every day, and savoring it, should be noted.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #762337
#43. France is the land where dalliance is so passionately understood.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #772798
#44. Much ingenuity with a little money is vastly more profitable and amusing than much money without ingenuity.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #777690
#45. Only a very gifted mind could cope singly with all the problems which present themselves in the perfecting of a home.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #805799
#46. I am entirely convinced that what is more than anything else lacking in the life of the average well-intentioned man of to-day is the reflective mood.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #808326
#47. A life in which conduct does not fairly well accord with principles is a silly life; and that conduct can only be made to accord with principles by means of daily examination, reflection, and resolution.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #841450
#48. The best cure for worry, depression, melancholy, brooding, is to go deliberately forth and try to lift with one's sympathy the gloom of somebody else.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #848127
#49. To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this matter for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #880183
#50. If egotism means a terrific interest in one's self, egotism is absolutely essential to efficient living.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #892445
#51. You probably think of the orchestra as a heterogeneous mass of instruments
producing a confused agreeable mass
of sound. You do not listen for details because you have never trained your ears to listen to details.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #898827
#52. Being a husband is a whole-time job.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #920089
#53. I don't read my reviews, I measure them.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #946157
#54. The artist who is too sensitive for contacts with the non-artistic world is thereby too sensitive for his vocation, and fit only to fall into gentle ecstasies over the work of artists less sensitive than himself.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #963929
#55. The moment you're born you're done for.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #975605
#56. chief beauty about the constant supply of time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoilt, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your career.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #977217
#57. The man who begins to go to bed forty minutes before he opens his bedroom door is bored; that is to say, he is not living.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #983001
#58. Humanity walks ever on a thin crust over terrific abysses.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1061803
#59. The saxophone is the embodied spirit of beer.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1079783
#60. The manner of his life was of no importance. What affected her was that he had once been young. That he had grown old, and was now dead. That was all. Youth and vigour had come to that. Youth and vigour always came to that. Everything came to that.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1092791
#61. Every scene, even the commonest, is wonderful, if only one can detach oneself, casting off all memory of use and custom and behold it, as it were, for the first time.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1098046
#62. I do want an expensive honeymoon. Not because I'm extravagant, but because a honeymoon is a solemn, important thing ... a symbol. And it ought to be done
well, adequately.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1103062
#63. Beware of undertaking too much at the start. Be content with quite a little. Allow for accidents. Allow for human nature, especially your own.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1120203
#64. Concentrate on something useful. Having decided to achieve a task, achieve it at all costs.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1131880
#65. No mind, however loving, could bear to see plainly into all the recess of another mind.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1155211
#66. I can't have you making tea for me. It's not decent.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1176586
#67. A sense of the value of time ... is an essential preliminary to efficient work; it is the only method of avoiding hurry.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1181567
#68. Far from the madding crowd is a mistake on a honeymoon ... Solitude! Wherever you are, if you're on a honeymoon, you'll get quite as much solitude as is good for you every twenty-four hours. Constant change and distraction
that's what wants arranging for. Solitude will arrange itself.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1204875
#69. I hate being asked what I want. Because I never know.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1224284
#70. To be loved without a shred of any reserve is a necessity for me.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1245310
#71. There was something magnificent in dire tragedy, in the terror of it, in the necessity which it laid upon everybody to behave nobly and efficiently.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1270089
#72. It is difficult to make a reputation, but is even more difficult seriously to mar a reputation once properly made
so faithful is the public.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1274693
#73. you had better give up hope at once. If you are not prepared for discouragements and disillusions; if you will not be content with a small result for a big effort, then do not begin.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1287772
#74. We need a sense of the value of time - that is, of the best way to divide one's time into one's various activities.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1293573
#75. Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible, without it nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1346366
#76. Dear sir, you simply begin. There is no magic method of beginning. If a man standing on the edge of a swimming-bath and wanting to jump into the cold water should ask you, "How do I begin to jump?" you would merely reply, "Just jump. Take hold of your nerves, and jump.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1412494
#77. A first-rate organizer is never in a hurry. He is never late. He always keeps up his sleeve a margin for the unexpected.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1420739
#78. Which of us is not saying to himself
which of us has not been saying to himself all
his life:
"
I shall alter that when I have a little
more time"?
We never shall have any more time. We
have, and we have always had, all the time
there is.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1422735
#79. Always behave as if nothing had happened, no matter what has happened.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1432997
#80. I'm not ruthless. It's common sense that's ruthless.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1497447
#81. Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1507432
#82. Procrastination is suicide on the installment plan.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1518922
#83. A man's powers ought not to be monopolised by his ordinary day's work.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1570232
#84. Ninety percent of the friction of daily life is caused by tone of voice.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1590900
#85. At moments we are all artists.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1592165
#86. In search of ideas I spent yesterday morning in walking about, and went to the stores and bought things in four departments. A wonderful and delightful way of spending time. I think this sort of activity does stimulate creative ideas.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1615865
#87. You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1628245
#88. Happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1637423
#89. It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1678136
#90. But though you have the wealth of a cloak-room attendant at the Carlton Hotel, you cannot buy yourself a minute more time than I have, or the cat by the fire has.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1690537
#91. It is only people of small stature who have to stand on their dignity.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1695305
#92. The manner in which one single ray of light, one single precious hint, will clarify and energize the whole mental life of him who receives it, is among the most wonderful and heavenly of intellectual phenomena.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1708241
#93. Dazzling truth that you never will have "more time," since you already have all the time there is - you

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1769083
#94. I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them, they might as well cut bread and butter. Unless you give at least 45 minutes of careful, fatiguing reflection upon what you are reading, your minutes are chiefly wasted.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1846760
#95. Of all the inhabitants of the inferno, none but Lucifer knows that hell is hell, and the secret function of purgatory is to make of heaven an effective reality.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1851363
#96. The people who live in the past must yield to the people who live in the future. Otherwise the world would begin to turn the other way round.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1851786
#97. Good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1857452
#98. The makers of literature are those who have seen and felt the miraculous interestingness of the universe. If you have formed ... literary taste ... your life will be one long ecstasy of denying that the world is a dull place.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1859131
#99. All wrong doing is done in the sincere belief that it is the best thing to do.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1864315
#100. Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.

Arnold Bennett

Arnold Bennett Quotes #1864371

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