Arnold Bennett Quotations | Page 2

Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.

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

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

One of the chief things which my typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity; they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change - not rest, except in sleep.

Nearly all bookish people are snobs, and especially the more enlightened among them. They are apt to assume that if a writer has immense circulation, if he is enjoyed by plain persons, and if he can fill several theatres at once, he cannont possibly be worth reading and merits only indifference and disdain.

Being a husband is a whole-time job.

Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.

As a rule people don't collect books; they let books collect themselves.

I ought to reflect again and again, and yet again, that the beings that I have to steer are just as inevitable in the scheme of evolution as I am myself; have just as much right to be themselves as I am entitled to; and they all deserve from me as much sympathy as I give to myself.

Well, my deliberate opinion is - it's a jolly strange world.