Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Arnold Bennett (British Novelist)

Arnold Bennett (1867–1931,) fully Enoch Arnold Bennett, was an English novelist, dramatist, critic, and essayist. He is best known for his novels of the Potteries (‘the Five Towns,’) which portray provincial middle-class society in the industrial Midlands, England.

Born near Hanley, Staffordshire, Bennett became a solicitor’s assistant in London, but soon took up journalism, edited the journal Woman, and experimented with narrative prose. The Grand Babylon Hotel and Anna of the Five Towns, in realist and sensationalist styles respectively, were published more or less simultaneously in 1902.

In 1902, Bennett moved to Paris, where he wrote his masterpiece of realism, The Old Wives’ Tale (1908,) and the first volumes of the Clayhanger trilogy—Clayhanger (1910) and Hilda Lessways (1911.) In 1912, Bennett resettled permanently in England. His enormously popular play, The Great Adventure (1913,) was based on his novel Buried Alive (1908.)

During World War I, Bennett was active as a political propagandist and a civil servant, besides keeping up his other writing. The last Clayhanger novel, These Twain, appeared in 1916. In the postwar period, Bennett was idolized in both the literary and social scenes; he satirized the latter in Lord Raingo (1926.) Riceyman Steps (1923,) a portrayal of miserliness, was his last masterpiece.

Bennett was also an influential critic, and as ‘Jacob Tonson’ on The New Age, he was a discerning reviewer. His Journals, written in the manner of the French critics, the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, were published posthumously.

The “Arnold Bennett Omelet,” usually with smoked haddock, cheddar cheese, and cream, is named in Bennett’s honor. It was created at London’s Savoy Grill, where Bennett was a frequent post-theatre patron.

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All wrong doing is done in the sincere belief that it is the best thing to do.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Mistakes

No mind, however loving, could bear to see plainly into all the recesses of another mind.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: The Mind, Mind

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.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: The Artist, Inspiration

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.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Joy, Happiness

A sense of the value of time … is an essential preliminary to efficient work; it is the only method of avoiding hurry.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Time Management, Value of a Day

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.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Effort

Pessimism, when you get used to it, is just as agreeable as optimism.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Pessimism

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.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Life

Well, my deliberate opinion is – it’s a jolly strange world.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Opinions

Always behave as if nothing had happened no matter what has happened.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Manners

Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Confidence, Accomplishment, Assurance, General, Goals, Achievement, Success & Failure

Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing, Writers

Much ingenuity with a little money is vastly more profitable and amusing than much money without ingenuity.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Creativity

The best cure for worry, depression, melancholy, brooding, is to go deliberately forth and try to lift with one’s sympathy the gloom of somebody else.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Worry, Understanding

Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Change

You wake up in the morning, and your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of un-manufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. No one can take it from you. And no one receives either more or less than you receive.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Time Management, Time

The war years count double. Things and people not actively in use age twice as fast.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Aging

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
Topics: Books, Reading

Good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Character

If egotism means a terrific interest in one’s self, egotism is absolutely essential to efficient living.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Ego, Egotism

It is easier to go down a hill than up, but the view is from the top.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Effort, Adversity, Goals

It is within the experience of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach a certain intensity they are indistinguishable.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Pleasure

The people who live in the past must yield to the people who live in the future. Otherwise the world would begin to turn the other way round.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: The Past

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
Topics: Hell

It is well, when one is judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Friendship, Judgment, Friends and Friendship, Judging

We shall never have more time. We have, and have always had, all the time there is. No object is served in waiting until next week or even until to-morrow. Keep going day in and out. Concentrate on something useful. Having decided to achieve a task, achieve it at all costs.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Time, Achievements, Productivity, Value of Time, Time Management

A first-rate Organizer is never in a hurry. He is never late. He always keeps up his sleeve a margin for the unexpected.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Planning

In search of ideas I spent yesterday morning in walking about, and went to the stores and bought things in four departments. A wonderful and delightful way of spending time. I think this sort of activity does stimulate creative ideas.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Ideas

The price of justice is eternal publicity.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Justice

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.
Arnold Bennett
Topics: Planning

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