Quotes from Arnold Bennett

One-act [plays] are not strikingly remunerative, but, on the other hand, the veriest dullard could not spend more than a week in writing one.

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.

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.

And 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.

We shall never have more time. We have, and always had, all the time there is.

Money is far commoner than time. When one reflects, one perceives that money is just about the commonest thing there is.

If my typical man wishes to live fully and completely he must, in his mind, arrange a day within a day. And this inner day, a Chinese box in a larger Chinese box, must begin at 6 p.m. and end at 10 a.m. It is a day of sixteen hours; and during all these sixteen hours he has nothing whatever to do but cultivate his body and his soul and his fellow men.

Meat may go up in price — it has done — but books won't. Admission to picture galleries and concerts and so forth will remain quite low. The views from Richmond Hill or Hindhead, or along Pall Mall at sunset, the smell of the earth, the taste of fruit and of kisses — these things are unaffected by the machinations of trusts and the hysteria of stock exchanges.

I hate being asked what I want. Because I never know.

I'm not ruthless. It's common sense that's ruthless.

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.

The foundation of England's greatness is that Englishmen hate to look fools.

When one has thoroughly got imbued into one's head the leading truth that nothing happens without a cause, one grows not only large-minded, but large-hearted.

Philosophers have explained space. They have not explained time.

Happily the inhabitants of the Five Towns in that era were passably pleased with themselves; and they never even suspected that they were not quite modern and not quite awake. They thought that the intellectual, the industrial, and the social movements had gone about as far as these movements could go, and they were amazed at their own progress.

It is not until an age has receded into history, and all its mediocrity has dropped away from it, that we can see it as it is — as a group of men of genius. We forget the immense amount of twaddle that the great epochs produced.

The past is usually the enemy of cheerfulness and cheerfulness is a most precious attainment. Personally, I could even go so far as to exhibit hostility toward grief and a marked hostility toward remorse—two states of mind which feed on the past instead of the present.

In the majority of instances he [the typical man] does not precisely feel a passion for his business; at best he does not dislike it. He begins his business functions with some reluctance, as late as he can, and he ends them with joy, as early as he can. And his engines, while he is engaged in his business, are seldom at their full 'h.p.

Of course it is impossible, or at any rate very difficult, properly to study anything whatever without the aid of printed books. But if you desire to understand the deeper depths of bridge or of boat-sailing you would not be deterred by your lack of interest in literature from reading the best books on bridge or boat-sailing. We must, therefore, distinguish between literature, and books treating of subjects not literary.

There may be something of the amateur in all great artists.

First-class fiction is, and must be, in the final resort autobiographical.

If egotism means a terrific interest in one's self, egotism is absolutely essential to efficient living.

As I have previously said, the 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.

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. A highly singular commodity, showered upon you in a manner as singular as the commodity itself!