British novelist & playwright (1867-1931)
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.
ARNOLD BENNETT
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
Much ingenuity with a little money is vastly more profitable and amusing than much money without ingenuity.
ARNOLD BENNETT
Friendship and Happiness and Other Essays
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.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Honeymoon
Any society must govern according to the plane of intelligence of the more stupid mass of its members. And it must have rules, and those rules must have as few exceptions as possible.
ARNOLD BENNETT
How to Make the Best of Life
Take my advice. Make love to every pretty woman you meet. And remember, if you get 5 per cent on your outlay it's a good return.
ARNOLD BENNETT
diary, May 24, 1904
All wrong doing is done in the sincere belief that it is the best thing to do.
ARNOLD BENNETT
Friendship and Happiness and Other Essays
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.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Honeymoon
The chief beauty about the constant supply of 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 unspoilt, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your career.
ARNOLD BENNETT
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
The proper, wise balancing
of one's whole life may depend upon the
feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.
ARNOLD BENNETT
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
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.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Title
Always behave as if nothing had happened, no matter what has happened.
ARNOLD BENNETT
Denry the Audacious
Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Human Machine
As education widens, so does the marvellous vision of the universe widen, and the idea of God takes a more noble and mighty shape.
ARNOLD BENNETT
How to Make the Best of Life
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.
ARNOLD BENNETT
A Question of Sex
You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions.
ARNOLD BENNETT
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
Everybody is guilty of mistakes and of serious mistakes, and the contemplation of these mistakes must darken, be it ever so little, the last years of existence.
ARNOLD BENNETT
Self and Self-Management
We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Journal of Arnold Bennett
A prig is a pompous fool who has gone out for a ceremonial walk, and without knowing it has lost an important part of his attire, namely, his sense of humour.
ARNOLD BENNETT
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
We never shall have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.
ARNOLD BENNETT
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
If life is not a continual denial of the past, then it is nothing.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Reasonable Life