Quotes from Arthur Morrison

But here Billy Chope arrived to demand what the 'ell Sam Cardew was doing with his gal. Now Sam was ever readier for a fight than Billy was; but the sum of Billy's half pints was large: wherefore the fight began. On the skirt of a hilarious ring Lizerunt, after some small outcry, triumphed aloud. Four days before, she had no bloke; and here she stood with two, and those two fighting for her! Here in the public gaze, on the Flats! For almost five minutes she was Helen of Troy.

The schoolmen peer with dulled eyes from amid the heap of precedents and prescriptions about them, and, distracted by seeing a thing sanctioned neither by precedent nor by prescription, dub the man realist, and rail against him for that his work fits none of their pigeon-holes.

the piteous demand that the artist should be shut up in a flower-garden, and forbidden to peep through the hedge into the world.

But in the end the truth prevails, if it be well set forth; and the schoolmen, groaning in their infinite labour, wearily write another prescription, admit another precedent, and make another pigeon-hole.

It is the artist's privilege to seek his material where he pleases, and it is no man's privilege to say him nay.

They firmly believe it to be the sole function of art to minister to their personal comfort — as upholstery does.

Ah — h — h — h,' he said. 'I wish I was dead: an' kep' a cawfy shop.