George Gissing Quotes

Time is money says the proverb, but turn it around and you get a precious truth. Money is time.

For the man sound of body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every day has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously.

That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be generous.

For one thing, I know every book of mine by its scent.

I hate with a bitter hatred the names of lentils haricots - those pretentious cheats of the appetite, those tabulated humbugs, those certified aridites calling themselves human food!

The mind which renounces, once and for ever, a futile hope, has its compensation in ever-growing calm.

Life is a huge farce, and the advantage of possessing a sense of humour is that it enables one to defy fate with mocking laughter.

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.

Money is made at Christmas out of holly and mistletoe, but who save the vendors would greatly care if no green branch were procurable?

Parks are but pavement disguised with a growth of grass.

Money is time. With money I buy for cheerful use the hours which otherwise would not in any sense be mine; nay, which would make me their miserable bondsman.

Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice.

People have got that ancient prejudice so firmly rooted in their heads that one mustn't write save at I the dictation of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, writing is a business.

Perhaps it is while drinking tea that I most of all enjoy the sense of leisure.

It is because nations tend towards stupidity and baseness that mankind moves so slowly; it is because individuals have a capacity for better things that it moves at all.

Life, I fancy, would very often be insupportable, but for the luxury of self compassion.

The truths of life are not discovered by us. At moments unforeseen, some gracious influence descends upon the soul, touching it to an emotion which, we know not how, the mind transmutes into thought.

It is familiarity with life that makes time speed quickly. When every day is a step in the unknown, as for children, the days are long with gathering of experience . . .

To be at other people's orders brings out all the bad in me.

No, no; women, old or young, should never have to think about money.

London is a huge shop, with a hotel on the upper storeys.

Literature nowadays is a trade... the successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets.

Human creatures have a mervellous power of adapting themselves to necessity.

A pipe for the hour of work; a cigarette for the hour of conception; a cigar for the hour of vacuity.

To like Keats is a test of fitness for understanding poetry, just as to like Shakespeare is a test of general mental capacity.

It is our duty never to speak ill of others, you know; least of all when we know that to do so will be the cause of much pain and trouble.

I have the happiness of a passing moment, and what more can mortal ask?

To every man it is decreed: Thou shalt live alone. Happy they who imagine that they have escaped the common lot; happy, whilst they imagine it.

This is one of the bitter curses of poverty: it leaves no right to be generous.

I don't advise. You mutn't give any weight to what I say, except in so far as your own judgment approves it.