The war years count double. Things and people not actively in use age twice as fast.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Aging
Worry is evidence of an ill-controlled brain; it is merely a stupid waste of time in unpleasantness. If men and women practiced mental calisthenics as they do physical calisthenics, they would purge their brains of this foolishness.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Worry
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: Judgment, Friendship, Judging, Friends and Friendship
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 parents exist to teach the child, but also they must learn what the child has to teach them; and the child has a very great deal to teach them.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Parents
Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writers, Writing
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
If egotism means a terrific interest in one’s self, egotism is absolutely essential to efficient living.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Egotism, Ego
The price of justice is eternal publicity.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Justice
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
Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Intelligence, Cleverness
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: Success & Failure, Accomplishment, General, Confidence, Achievement, Assurance, Goals
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
Topics: Patience
Good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Character
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.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Blame
Pessimism, when you get used to it, is just as agreeable as optimism.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Pessimism
No mind, however loving, could bear to see plainly into all the recesses of another mind.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Mind, The Mind
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
Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Change
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: Understanding, Worry
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
Always behave as if nothing had happened no matter what has happened.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Manners
All wrong doing is done in the sincere belief that it is the best thing to do.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Mistakes
Much ingenuity with a little money is vastly more profitable and amusing than much money without ingenuity.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Creativity
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 within the experience of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach a certain intensity they are indistinguishable.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Pleasure
Well, my deliberate opinion is – it’s a jolly strange world.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Opinions
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: Productivity, Value of Time, Time, Time Management, Achievements
Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.
—Arnold Bennett
Topics: Discipline, Will Power, Attitude, Censorship
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: Happiness, Joy
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Israel Zangwill English Writer, Political Activist
- Doris Lessing British Novelist, Poet
- Dodie Smith American Author
- Gladys Bronwyn Stern British Writer
- Graham Greene British Novelist
- Agatha Christie British Novelist
- Dorothy L. Sayers English Novelist, Playwright
- H. G. Wells English Novelist, Historian
- Mary Elizabeth Braddon English Novelist
- Beryl Bainbridge British Novelist
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