Quotes from Arnold Bennett

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.

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.

Prepare to live by all means, but for Heaven's sake do not forget to live.

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.

The parents exist to teach the child, but also they must learn what the child has to teach them; and the child has a very great deal to teach them

Well, my deliberate opinion is - it's a jolly strange world.

Worry is evidence of an ill-controlled brain; it is merely a stupid waste of time in unpleasantness.

The real tragedy is the tragedy of the man who never in his life braces himself for his one supreme effort, who never stretches to his full capacity, never stands up to his full stature.

Take my advice. Make love to every pretty woman you meet. And remember, if you get 5 per cent on your outlay it's a good return.

Much ingenuity with a little money is vastly more profitable and amusing than much money without ingenuity.

As education widens, so does the marvellous vision of the universe widen, and the idea of God takes a more noble and mighty shape.

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

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.

Any society must govern according to the plane of intelligence of the more stupid mass of its members. And it must have rules, and those rules must have as few exceptions as possible.

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.

Always behave as if nothing had happened, no matter what has happened.

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.

We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours.

If life is not a continual denial of the past, then it is nothing.

Everybody is guilty of mistakes and of serious mistakes, and the contemplation of these mistakes must darken, be it ever so little, the last years of existence.

A prig is a pompous fool who has gone out for a ceremonial walk, and without knowing it has lost an important part of his attire, namely, his sense of humour.

Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all cost of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.

No mind, however loving, could bear to see plainly into all the recesses of another mind.

It is easier to go down a hill than up, but the view is best from the top.