British novelist & playwright (1867-1931)
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.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Journal of Arnold Bennett
Beware of undertaking too much at the start. Be content with quite a little. Allow for accidents. Allow for human nature, especially your own.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Best of Arnold Bennett
Worry is a form of friction. The task of the expert in life is to run his machine with the maximum of activity and the minimum of friction. If he stops or slows the machine because he cannot otherwise deal with the friction, then life has beaten him.
ARNOLD BENNETT
How to Make the Best of Life
Yes books are valuable. But not reading of books will take the place of a daily, candid, honest examination of what one has recently done, and what one is about to do -- of a steady looking at one's self in the face (disconcerting though the sight may be).
ARNOLD BENNETT
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
A test of a first-rate work, and a test of your sincerity in calling it a first-rate work, is that you finish it.
ARNOLD BENNETT
Things That Have Interested Me
Humanity walks ever on a thin crust over terrific abysses.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Old Wives' Tale
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.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Journal of Arnold Bennett
For me there is no supremacy in art. When fifty artists have contrived to be supreme, supremacy is impossible.
ARNOLD BENNETT
Sacred and Profane Love
You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.
ARNOLD BENNETT
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
The price of justice is eternal publicity.
ARNOLD BENNETT
"Secret Trials", Things That Have Interested Me
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.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Title
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; in its right, authentic colors; without making comparisons.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Journal of Arnold Bennett
The artist who is too sensitive for contacts with the non-artistic world is thereby too sensitive for his vocation, and fit only to fall into gentle ecstasies over the work of artists less sensitive than himself.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Author's Craft
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.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Journal of Arnold Bennett
If egotism means a terrific interest in one's self, egotism is absolutely essential to efficient living.
ARNOLD BENNETT
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
Worry sits on the countenance of nearly every season ticket-holder in the morning train and in the evening train. You see it in the streets, offices, and restaurants, and you can even meet it in the country lanes. The habit of worrying infallibly leaves its mark, and the mark is there for all to notice.
ARNOLD BENNETT
How to Make the Best of Life