Arnold Bennett quotes:

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

Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

We shall never have more time. We have, and always had, all the time there is. No object is served in waiting until next week or even until tomorrow. Keep going... Concentrate on something useful.

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

The price of justice is eternal publicity.

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

I think it rather fine, this necessity for the tense bracing of the will before anything worth doing can be done. I rather like it myself. I feel it is to be the chief thing that differentiates me from the cat by the fire.

The best cure for worry, depression, melancholy, brooding, is to go deliberately forth and try to lift with one's sympathy the gloom of somebody else.

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

Ninety percent of the friction of daily life is caused by tone of voice.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The moment you're born you're done for.

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

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

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

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.

The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one is.

Anthology construction is one of the pleasantest hobbies that a person who is not mad about golf and bridge - that is to say, a thinking person - can possibly have

The moment you're born you're done for

It is difficult to make a reputation, but is even more difficult seriously to mar a reputation once properly made --- so faithful is the public.

without the power to concentrate thatis 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.

The chief beauty about timeis 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 misapplieda single moment in all your life.You can turn over a new leaf every hourif you choose.

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

The pleasure of doing a thing in the same way at the same time every day, and savoring it, should be noted.

A man of sixty has spent twenty years in bed and over three years in eating.

Saw Washington Monument. Phallic. Appalling. A national catastrophe.

Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.

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.

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.

The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense.

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.

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.

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

Good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste.

The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained it. And they have attained it by realizing that 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.

You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most people sleep themselves stupid.

In search of ideas I spent yesterday morning in walking about, and went to the stores and bought things in four departments. A wonderful and delightful way of spending time. I think this sort of activity does stimulate creative ideas.

At moments we are all artists.

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

I ought to reflect again and again, and yet again, that the beings that I have to steer are just as inevitable in the scheme of evolution as I am myself; have just as much right to be themselves as I am entitled to; and they all deserve from me as much sympathy as I give to myself.

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

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

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

The most important preliminary to the task of arranging one's life so that one may live fully and comfortably within one's daily budget of 24 hours is the calm realization of the extreme difficulty of the task, of the sacrifices and the endless effort which it demands.

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

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

Being a husband is a whole-time job.

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

The saxophone is the embodied spirit of beer.

Great wealth may be to its owner a blessing or a curse. Alas! I fear it is too often the latter. It hardens the heart, blunts the finer susceptibilities, and transforms into a fiend what under more favourable circumstances might have been a human being.

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.

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.

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

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.

Procrastination is suicide on the installment plan.

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

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

It is within the experience of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach a certain intensity they are indistinguishable.

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; in its right, authentic colors; without making comparisons. Cherish and burnish this faculty of seeing crudely, simply, artlessly, ignorantly; of seeing like a baby or a lunatic, who lives each moment by itself and tarnishes by the present no remembrance of the past.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

If you imagine that you will be able to achieve your ideal by ingeniously planning out a timetable with a pen on a piece of paper, 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. Lie down again and resume the uneasy doze which you call your existence.

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.

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.

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