Arnold Bennett Quotes

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

A sense of the value of time... is an essential preliminary to efficient work; it is the only method of avoiding hurry.

Most people sleep themselves stupid.

To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking.

Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.

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.

Only a very gifted mind could cope singly with all the problems which present themselves in the perfecting of a home.

Time is the explicable raw material of everything.

To my mind the most poignant mystical exhoration ever written is "Be still and know that I am God."

You can only acquire really useful general ideas by first acquiring particular ideas . . . You cannot make bricks without straw.

As a rule people don't collect books; they let books collect themselves.

There is no magic method of beginning... Take hold of your nerves, and jump.

I don't read my reviews, I measure them.

At moments we are all artists.

Make love to every woman you meet; if you get five per cent of your outlay it's a good investment.

During a long and varied career as a bachelor, dear spouse [mock platform manner], I have noticed that marriage is usually the death of politeness between a man and a woman.

It is only people of small stature who have to stand on their dignity.

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.

I will never cease advising my friends and enemies to read poetry before anything.

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

Literature exists so that where one man has lived finely ten thousand may afterward live finely

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.

The war years count double. Things and people not actively in use age twice as fast.

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

No matter what has happened always behave as if nothing had happened.

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

Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like all-embracing compassion.

Any change even a change for the better is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.

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

If you've ever really been poor you remain poor at heart all your life.

A sense of the value of time ... is an essential preliminary to efficient work it is the only method of avoiding hurry.

It is well when judging a friend to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.

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.