Arnold Bennett Quotes

Arnold Bennett offers witty, critical takes on society and media that feel like a clever chat.

17 quotes

1. 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.

2. The price of justice is eternal publicity.

3. 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.

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

5. 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.

6. 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.

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

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

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

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

11. 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.

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

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

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

15. 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.

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

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