Arnold Bennett Quotes & Sayings

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. — Arnold Bennett

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. — Arnold Bennett

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. — Arnold Bennett

You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste to-morrow; it is kept for you. — Arnold Bennett

To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this matter for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists. — Arnold Bennett

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

You probably think of the orchestra as a heterogeneous mass of instruments
producing a confused agreeable mass
of sound. You do not listen for details because you have never trained your ears to listen to details. — Arnold Bennett

One of the chief things which my typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity; they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change - not rest, except in sleep. — Arnold Bennett

And since nothing whatever happens to us outside our own brain; since nothing hurt us or gives us pleasure except within the brain, the supreme importance of being able to control what goes on in that mysterious brain is patent. — Arnold Bennett

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. — Arnold Bennett

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

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

Being a husband is a whole-time job. That is why so many husbands fail. They cannot give their entire attention to it. — Arnold Bennett

You are not in charge of the universe; you are in charge of yourself. — Arnold Bennett

Being a husband is a whole-time job. — Arnold Bennett

The second suggestion is to think as well as to read. I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as well cut bread-and-butter. They take to reading as better men take to drink. They fly through the shires of literature on a motor-car, their sole object being motion. They will tell you how many books they have read in a year. Unless you give at least 45 minutes to careful, fatiguing reflection (it is an awful bore at first) upon what you are reading, your 90 minutes of a night are chiefly wasted. — Arnold Bennett

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

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. — Arnold Bennett

A true friend is one who likes you despite your achievements. — Arnold Bennett

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

Jane Austen? I feel that I am approaching dangerous ground. The reputation of Jane Austen is surrounded by cohorts of defenders who are ready to do murder for their sacred cause. — Arnold Bennett

Good clothes, when put to the test, survive a change in fortune, as a Roman arch survives the luxury of departed empire. — Arnold Bennett

Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible, without it nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. — Arnold Bennett

Most people sleep themselves stupid. — Arnold Bennett

you had better give up hope at once. If you are not prepared for discouragements and disillusions; if you will not be content with a small result for a big effort, then do not begin. — Arnold Bennett

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. — Arnold Bennett

Concentrate on something useful. Having decided to achieve a task, achieve it at all costs. — Arnold Bennett

To be loved without a shred of any reserve is a necessity for me. — Arnold Bennett

Every scene, even the commonest, is wonderful, if only one can detach oneself, casting off all memory of use and custom and behold it, as it were, for the first time. — Arnold Bennett

...the danger of developing a policy of rush, of being gradually more and more obsessed by what one has to do next. In this way one may come to exist as in a prison, and one's life may cease to be one's own. One may take the dog out for a walk at eight o'clock, and meditate the whole time on the fact that one must begin to read at a quarter to nine, and that one must not be late.
And the occasional deliberate breaking of one's programme will not help to mend matters. The evil springs not from persisting without elasticity in what one has attempted, but from originally attempting too much, from filling one's programme till it runs over. The only cure is to reconstitute the programme, and to attempt less. — Arnold Bennett

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

A man's powers ought not to be monopolised by his ordinary day's work. — Arnold Bennett

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

If you've ever really been poor you remain poor at heart all your life. I've often walked when I could very well afford to take a taxi because I simply couldn't bring myself to waste the shilling it would cost. — Arnold Bennett

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

Nearly all bookish people are snobs, and especially the more enlightened among them. They are apt to assume that if a writer has immense circulation, if he is enjoyed by plain persons, and if he can fill several theatres at once, he cannont possibly be worth reading and merits only indifference and disdain. — Arnold Bennett

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. — Arnold Bennett

France is the land where dalliance is so passionately understood. — 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. — Arnold Bennett

Dazzling truth that you never will have "more time," since you already have all the time there is - you — Arnold Bennett

The saxophone is the embodied spirit of beer. — Arnold Bennett

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

But though you have the wealth of a cloak-room attendant at the Carlton Hotel, you cannot buy yourself a minute more time than I have, or the cat by the fire has. — Arnold Bennett

The chief beauty about the constant supply of time is that you cannot waste it in advance. — Arnold Bennett

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

The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. 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! — Arnold Bennett

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. — Arnold Bennett

I don't read my reviews, I measure them. — Arnold Bennett

Happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles. — Arnold Bennett

Worry is evidence of an ill-controlled brain; it is merely a stupid waste of time in unpleasantness. If men and women practiced mental calisthenics as they do physical calisthenics, they would purge their brains of this foolishness. — Arnold Bennett

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

Only people, especially Anglo-Saxons, are so afraid lest joyfulness may somehow be reprehensible that they will never admit it as a lawful and laudable end in itself. — Arnold Bennett

I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them, they might as well cut bread and butter. Unless you give at least 45 minutes of careful, fatiguing reflection upon what you are reading, your minutes are chiefly wasted. — Arnold Bennett

All wrong doing is done in the sincere belief that it is the best thing to do. — Arnold Bennett

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

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. — Arnold Bennett

I am entirely convinced that what is more than anything else lacking in the life of the average well-intentioned man of to-day is the reflective mood. — Arnold Bennett

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

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. — Arnold Bennett

Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man. — Arnold Bennett

At moments we are all artists. — Arnold Bennett

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 — Arnold Bennett

This place is a regular whispering-gallery. — Arnold Bennett

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. — Arnold Bennett

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

Good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste. — Arnold Bennett

The manner in which one single ray of light, one single precious hint, will clarify and energize the whole mental life of him who receives it, is among the most wonderful and heavenly of intellectual phenomena. — Arnold Bennett

Ardour in well-doing is a misleading and a treacherous thing. It cries out loudly for employment; you can't satisfy it at first; it wants more and more; it is eager to move mountains and divert the course of rivers. It isn't content till it perspires. And then, too often, when it feels the perspiration on its brow, it wearies all of a sudden and dies, without even putting itself to the trouble of saying, I've had enough of this. — Arnold Bennett

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. — Arnold Bennett

Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission. — Arnold Bennett

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. — Arnold Bennett

Talk about an ideal democracy! In the realm of time there is no aristocracy of wealth, and no aristocracy of intellect. Genius is never rewarded by even an extra hour a day. And there is no punishment. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will, and the supply will never be withheld from you. No mysterious power will say: - "This man is a fool, if not a knave. He does not deserve time; he shall be cut off at the meter." It is more certain than consols, and payment of income is not affected by Sundays. Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste to-morrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you — Arnold Bennett

You wake up in the morning, and your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of un-manufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. No one can take it from you. And no one receives either more or less than you receive. — Arnold Bennett

Because her instinct has told her, or because she has been reliably informed, the faded virgin knows that the supreme joys are not for her; she knows by a process of the intellect; but she can feel her deprivation no more than the young mother can feel the hardship of the virgin's lot. — Arnold Bennett

The test of a first-rate work, and a test of your sincerity in calling it a first-rate work, is that you finish it. — Arnold Bennett

Its language is a language which the soul alone understands, but which the soul can never translate. — Arnold Bennett

The manner of his life was of no importance. What affected her was that he had once been young. That he had grown old, and was now dead. That was all. Youth and vigour had come to that. Youth and vigour always came to that. Everything came to that. — Arnold Bennett

There was something magnificent in dire tragedy, in the terror of it, in the necessity which it laid upon everybody to behave nobly and efficiently. — Arnold Bennett

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

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

The public is a great actuality, like war. If you are a creative and creating artist, you cannot ignore it, though it can ignore you. — Arnold Bennett

A first-rate organizer is never in a hurry. He is never late. He always keeps up his sleeve a margin for the unexpected. — Arnold Bennett

The makers of literature are those who have seen and felt the miraculous interestingness of the universe. If you have formed ... literary taste ... your life will be one long ecstasy of denying that the world is a dull place. — Arnold Bennett

Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like. — Arnold Bennett

Humanity walks ever on a thin crust over terrific abysses. — Arnold Bennett

Beware of undertaking too much at the start. Be content with quite a little. Allow for accidents. Allow for human nature, especially your own. — Arnold Bennett

Falsehood often lurks upon the tongue of him, who, by self-praise, seeks to enhance his value in the eyes of others. — Arnold Bennett

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. — Arnold Bennett

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

During a long and varied career as a bachelor, I have noticed that marriage is the death of politeness between a man and a woman. — Arnold Bennett

If a man makes two-thirds of his existence subservient to one-third, for which admittedly he has no absolutely feverish zest, how can he hope to live fully and completely? He cannot. — Arnold Bennett

Any change, even a change for the better is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts. — Arnold Bennett

I can't have you making tea for me. It's not decent. — Arnold Bennett

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

The moment you're born you're done for. — Arnold Bennett

The artist who is too sensitive for contacts with the non-artistic world is thereby too sensitive for his vocation, and fit only to fall into gentle ecstasies over the work of artists less sensitive than himself. — Arnold Bennett

Time is the explicable raw material of everything. — Arnold Bennett

You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. — Arnold Bennett

We need a sense of the value of time - that is, of the best way to divide one's time into one's various activities. — Arnold Bennett

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