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Arnold Bennett

b: Staffordshire, England, May 27, 1867

d: London, England, Mar 27, 1932

English. Author. Known for realistic noves: Old Wives Tales, 1908; Five Towns series.

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"A beautiful game, superbly played. ... Yes, a grand game, a game entirely worthy of its reputation."

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 labor is immense.

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.

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

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

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. -

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The price of justice is eternal publicity.

The traveler, however virginal and enthusiastic, does not enjoy an unbroken ecstasy. He has periods of gloom, periods when he asks himself the object of all these exertions, and puts the question whether or not he is really experiencing pleasure. At such times he suspects that he is not seeing the right things, that the characteristic, the right aspects of these strange scenes are escaping him. He looks forward dully to the days of his holiday yet to pass, and wonders how he will dispose of them. He is disgusted because his money is not more, his command of the language so slight, and his capacity for enjoyment so limited.

There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

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.

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.

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

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.

You will make more friends in a week by getting yourself interested in other people than you can in a year by trying to get other people interested in you.

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