Arnold Bennett
Birth Name: Enoch Arnold Bennett
Birthdate: May 27, 1867
Birthplace: Hanley, Staffordshire, England, United Kingdom
Date of Death: March 27, 1931
Occupation: Author, Journalist, and Playwright
Profile: Best known for his
Five Towns novels.
Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Bennett
Number of Quotes: 44
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.
The Title (1918)
A first-rate organizer is never in a hurry. He is never late. He always keeps up his sleeve a margin for the unexpected.
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.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1910)
As a rule people don't collect books; they let books collect themselves.
Being a husband is a whole-time job. That is why so many husbands fail. They cannot give their entire attention to it.
The Matador of the Five Towns
Beware of undertaking too much at the start. Be content with quite a little. Allow for accidents. Allow for human nature, especially your own.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1910)
Being a husband is a whole-time job. That is why so many husbands fail. They cannot give their entire attention to it.
The Title (1918)
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.
The Journal of 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.
The Journal of Arnold Bennett
Good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste.
Attribution questionable.
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.
I have been an author for over twenty years and I have never taken a holiday... in my view a man who takes a holiday abandons his life.
The Journal of Arnold Bennett
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.
Journalism – a profession whose business it is to explain to others what one does not understand oneself.
Reflects a common sentiment in his writings about the press.
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.
Life is a factory... the raw material is time.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day - Paraphrased essence.
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.
My desire is to make people laugh or cry, or both, and to keep them out of bed as late as possible.
Preface to The Old Wives' Tale.
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.
One cannot reflect in dispersed moments. One must have time for proper reflection.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1910)
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
Often quoted, though the exact origin within his work is elusive; widely attributed and characteristic of his bookishness.
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... You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1910)
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 Title (1918)
The real tragedy is the tragedy of the man who never in his life braces himself for his one
supreme effort, who never stretches to his full capacity, never stands up to his full stature.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1910)
The rough broad difference between the American and the European business man is that
the latter is anxious to leave his work, while the former is anxious to get to it.
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.
The Human Machine (1908)
There is no magic in small sums of money. But there is magic in large sums.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1910)
They have the right to put you to death, but not the right to judge you. That is reserved to a higher tribunal.
The Title (1918)
Those who always wait for the right time never do anything.
Mental Efficiency
To be great is to be misunderstood? Not to be misunderstood in a world like this is to be commonplace.
The Journal of 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.
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.
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.
Well, my deliberate opinion is - it's a jolly strange world.
You can only do one thing at a time, and do that well.
Reflects a core principle in How to Live on 24 Hours a Day and his other self-help writings.
You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day - Paraphrased essence.
Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.
The Human Machine (1908)
Last on Earth
