Arnold Bennett Quotes

“All wrong doing is done in the sincere belief that it is the best thing to do.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“Pessimism, when you get used to it, is just as agreeable as optimism.”

“The chief beauty about 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 unspoiled,
as if you had never wasted or misapplied
a single moment in all your life.
You can turn over a new leaf every hour
if you choose.”

“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.”

“There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.”

“Your own mind is a sacred enclosure in to which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Man, know thyself. I say it out loud. The phrase is one of those phrases with which everyone is familiar, of which everyone acknowledges the value, and which only the most sagacious put into practice. I don't know why.”

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

“Most people who are ruined are ruined by attempting too much.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“We never shall have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.”

“Which of us is not saying to himself--which of us has not been saying to himself all his life: "I shall alter that when I have a little more time"? We never shall have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.”

“You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“A cause may be inconvenient, but it's magnificent. It's like champagne or high heels, and one must be prepared to suffer for it.”