The Arnold Bennett Calendar

My theory is that if a really big concern is properly organized, the boss ought to be absolutely independent of all routine. He ought to be free for anything that turns up unexpectedly.

Often I have felt that: “I know enough, I feel enough. If my future is as long as my past, I shall still not be able to put down the tenth part of what I have already acquired.”

In journalism, as probably in no other profession, success depends wholly upon the loyal co-operation, the perfect reliability, of a number of people—some great, some small, but none irresponsible.

The significance and the worth of literature are to be comprehended and assessed in the same way as the significance and the worth of any other phenomenon: by the exercise of common-sense.

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

There is always a mental inferior handy, just as there is always a being more unhappy than we are.

Often have I said inwardly: “World, when I talk with you, dine with you, wrangle with you, love you, and hate you, I condescend.” Every artist has said that. People call it conceit; people may call it what they please.

The artistic pleasures of an uncultivated mind are generally violent.

Literature cannot be said to have served its true purpose until it has been translated into the actual life of him who reads.

When you cannot express yourself, depend upon it that you have nothing precise to express.

Monotony, solitude, are essential to the full activity of the artist. Just as a horse is seen best when coursing alone over a great plain, so the fierce and callous egotism of the artist comes to its perfection in a vast expanse of custom, leisure, and apparently vacuous reverie.

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.

We can no more spend all our waking hours in consciously striving towards higher things than we can dine exclusively off jam.

All spending is a matter of habit.

The views from Richmond Hill or Hindhead, or along Pall Mall at sunset, the smell of the earth, the taste of fruit and of kisses—these things are unaffected by the machinations of trusts and the hysteria of stock exchanges.

If there is one point common to all classics, it is the absence of exaggeration.

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

When you live two and a half miles from a railway you can cut a dash on an income which in London spells omnibus instead of cab. For myself, I have a profound belief in the efficacy of cutting a dash.

No one can write correctly without deliberately and laboriously learning how to write correctly. On the other hand, everyone can learn to write correctly who takes sufficient trouble. Correct writing is a mechanical accomplishment; it could be acquired by a stockbroker.

An understanding appreciation of literature means an understanding appreciation of the world, and it means nothing else.

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

Nothing is easier than to explain an accomplished fact in a nice, agreeable, conventional way.

Literature is the art of using words. This is not a platitude, but a truth of the first importance, a truth so profound that many writers never get down to it, and so subtle that many other writers who think they see it never in fact really comprehend it.

In the choice of reading the individual must count; caprice must count, for caprice is often the truest index to the individuality.

There is an infection in the air of London, a zymotic influence which is the mysterious cause of unnaturalness, pose, affectation, artificiality, moral neuritis, and satiety. One loses grasp of the essentials in an undue preoccupation with the vacuities which society has invented. The distractions are too multiform. One never gets a chance to talk common-sense with one’s soul.

An early success is a snare. The inexperienced author takes too much for granted. Conceit overcomes him. He regards himself with an undue seriousness. He thinks that he is founded on granite for ever.

The splendid pertinacity and ingenuity of the American journalist in wringing copy out of any and every side of existence cannot fail to quicken the pulse of those who are accustomed to the soberer, narrower, sleepier ways of English newspapers. Fleet Street pretends to despise and contemn American methods, yet a gradual Americanising of the English press is always taking place, with results on the whole admirable.

Stand defiantly on your own feet, and do not excuse yourself to yourself.

This is a matter of daily observation: that people are frantically engaged in attempting to get hold of things which, by universal experience, are hideously disappointing to those who have obtained possession of them.

It is a current impression that style is something apart from, something foreign to, matter—a beautiful robe which, once it is found, may be used to clothe the nudity of matter. Young writers wander forth searching for style, as one searches for that which is hidden. They might employ themselves as profitably in looking for the noses on their faces. For style is personal, as much a portion of one’s self as the voice. It is within, not without; it needs only to be elicited, brought to light.

When I had been in London a decade, I stood aside from myself and reviewed my situation with the god-like and detached impartiality of a trained artistic observer. And what I saw was a young man who pre-eminently knew his way about, and who was apt to be rather too complacent over this fact; a young man with some brilliance but far more shrewdness; a young man with a highly developed faculty for making a little go a long way; a young man who was accustomed to be listened to when he thought fit to speak, and who was decidedly more inclined to settle questions than to raise them.