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diff --git a/64933-h/64933-h.htm b/64933-h/64933-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..747b5ed --- /dev/null +++ b/64933-h/64933-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5907 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=us-ascii" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Arnold Bennett Calendar, by Arnold Bennett—A Project Gutenberg eBook + </title> + <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> + <style type="text/css"> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + h1,h2,h3,h4 { + text-align: center; + clear: both; +} + +p { + margin-top: .51em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .49em; +} + +div.titlepage {text-align: center; page-break-before: always; page-break-after: always;} +div.titlepage p {text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: 2em;} + + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; +} + +hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} +h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} + + +.hangingindent { text-indent: -2em; margin-left: 2em; } + +.pagenum { + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; +} + +.pagenum2 { + position: absolute; + left: 90.25%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; + font-weight: normal; + font-variant: normal; +} + +.x-ebookmaker .pagenum2 {display: none;} + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.bbox {border: 2px solid; padding-left: 2em; padding-right: 2em;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.right {text-align: right;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + + +.ph1 {text-align: center; font-size: large; font-weight: bold;} +.ph2 {text-align: center; font-size: xx-large; font-weight: bold;} +.xxlarge {font-size: 250%;} +.xlarge {font-size: 150%;} +.large {font-size: 125%;} + + + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + + + +.poetry-container {text-align: center;} +.poetry {display: inline-block; text-align: left;} +.poetry .verse {text-indent: -2.5em; padding-left: 3em;} +.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} +.poetry .indent {text-indent: 1.5em;} + +.x-ebookmaker .poetry {display: block;} + +.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:smaller; + margin-left: 17.5%; + margin-right: 17.5%; + padding: 1em 1em 1em 1em; + margin-bottom: 5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; } + + + </style> + </head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.1em; font-weight:bold; margin-bottom:1em;'> +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Arnold Bennett Calendar, by Enoch Arnold Bennett +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> + +<div style='display:table;margin-bottom:1em;'> + <div style='display:table-row;'> + <div style='display:table-cell;padding-right:0.5em;'>Title:</div> + <div style='display:table-cell;'>The Arnold Bennett Calendar</div> + </div> +</div> + <div style='display:table-row;'> + <div style='display:table-cell;padding-right:0.5em;'>Author: </div> + <div style='display:table-cell;'>Enoch Arnold Bennett</div> + </div> +<div style='height:10px'></div> + <div style='display:table-row;'> + <div style='display:table-cell;padding-right:0.5em;'>Compiler: </div> + <div style='display:table-cell;'>Frank C. Bennett</div> + </div> +<div style='height:10px'></div> +<div style='margin-bottom:1em;'> +Release Date: Mar 27, 2021 [eBook #64933] +</div> + +<div style='margin-bottom:1em;'> +Language: English +</div> + +<div style='display:table;margin-bottom:1em;'> + <div style='display:table-row;'> + <div style='display:table-cell;vertical-align:top;'>Produced by: </div> + <div style='display:table-cell;'>D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</div> + </div> +</div> + +<div style='margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1.5em;'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG BOOK OF THE ARNOLD BENNETT CALENDAR ***</div> + + +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" width="40%" alt="" /></div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<h1><i>The Arnold Bennett Calendar</i></h1> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + +<div class="bbox"> +<p class="ph1">BY ARNOLD BENNETT</p> + + +<div class="stanza"> +<div class="verse">NOVELS</div> + +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">The Old Wives’ Tale</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">Helen with the High Hand</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">The Matador of the Five Towns</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">The Book of Carlotta</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">Buried Alive</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">A Great Man</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">Leonora</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">Whom God Hath Joined</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">A Man from the North</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">Anna of the Five Towns</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">The Glimpse</span></div> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<div class="verse">POCKET PHILOSOPHIES</div> + +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">How to Live on 24 Hours A Day</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">The Human Machine</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">Literary Taste</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">Mental Efficiency</span></div> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<div class="verse">PLAYS</div> + +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">Cupid and Commonsense</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">What the Public Wants</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">Polite Farces</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">Milestones</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">The Honeymoon</span></div> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<div class="verse">MISCELLANEOUS</div> + +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">The Truth About an Author</span></div> +<div class="indent"><span class="smcap">The Feast of St. Friend</span></div> +</div> + + +<p class="center">GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br /> +NEW YORK</p> +</div></div></div></div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<div class="titlepage"> + +<p><span class="xlarge"><i>The<br /> +Arnold Bennett<br /> +Calendar</i></span></p> + +<p><i>Compiled By<br /> +<span class="large">Frank Bennett</span></i></p> + +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_title.jpg" alt="" /></div> + +<p><i>New York</i><br /> +<span class="large"><i>George H· Doran Company</i></span></p> +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="center"> +COPYRIGHT, 1912<br /> +BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<br /> +<br /> +THE·PLIMPTON·PRESS<br /> +[W·D·O]<br /> +NORWOOD·MASS·U·S·A</p></div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[v]</span></p> + + +<p><span class="xxlarge">E</span><i>noch Arnold Bennett was born at +Hanley-in-the-Potteries (one of the “Five Towns” +frequently appearing in his writings) on 27th +May 1867. He was educated at the endowed Middle +School, Newcastle-under-Lyme, and matriculated +in the London University. From school he went +into the office of his father, who practised as a +solicitor at Hanley, and stayed with him until +1889, when he took a post in a solicitor’s office +in London, which he held until 1893. In that +year he abandoned the law finally to become assistant +editor of</i> Woman, <i>and succeeded to the editorship in +1896. This post he resigned in 1900 to devote himself +exclusively to literature. In the meantime several +of his works had been issued, the first being “A Man +from the North” (1898) and a handbook, “Journalism +for Women,” followed in the next year by the +publication of a volume of plays, “Polite Farces,” his +first experiments in drama. Afterwards appeared in +rapid succession nine other novels, two volumes of +short stories, seven volumes of belles-lettres, and seven +fantasias. Besides these he wrote two plays, “Cupid +and Common-Sense,” produced by the Stage Society +in 1908, and “What the Public Wants,” also produced +by the Stage Society in 1909, and afterwards +by Mr. Hawtrey at the New Royalty Theatre. Both<span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[vi]</span> +these plays were subsequently staged in Glasgow, and +by Miss Horniman’s Company. The most important +of his publications include:—among novels, “Leonora,” +“A Great Man,” “Sacred and Profane Love,” “Whom +God Hath Joined——,” “The Old Wives’ Tale,” and +“Clayhanger”; among the belles-lettres, “The Truth +about an Author,” “Literary Taste,” “The Reasonable +Life,” “The Human Machine,” and “How to +Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day” (the last four +contributed originally to</i> T. P.’s Weekly, <i>and containing +indications of Mr. Bennett’s theories of life); and +in the short stories, “Tales of the Five Towns,” and +“The Grim Smile of the Five Towns.” Mr. Bennett +has very definite leanings towards Socialism, and, +under a pseudonym, writes regularly for</i> The New +Age. <i>He also contributes from time to time to the +most important progressive weekly and monthly +magazines.</i></p> + +<p class="right"><i>F. C. B.</i></p> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="ph2"><i>The Arnold Bennett Calendar</i></p> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<span class="pagenum2" id="Page_9">[9]</span> +<h2 class="nobreak"><i>January</i></h2> +</div> + +<div class="hangingindent"> + +<h3><i>One</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The individual who scoffs at New Year’s +resolutions resembles the woman who +says she doesn’t look under the bed at +nights; the truth is not in him.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>To give pleasure is the highest end of +any work of art, because the pleasure +procured from any art is tonic, and +transforms the life into which it enters.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There are only two fundamental differences +in the world—the difference between +sex and sex, and the difference +between youth and age.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The only class of modern play in which +it is possible to be both quite artistic +and quite marketable, is the farce.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>To enjoy a work of imagination is no +pastime, rather a sweet but fatiguing +labour. After a play of Shakespeare or +a Wagnerian opera repose is needed. +Only a madman like Louis of Bavaria +could demand <i>Tristan</i> twice in one +night.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Great books do not spring from something +accidental in the great men who +wrote them. They are the effluence of +their very core, the expression of the life +itself of the authors.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is within the experience of everyone +that when pleasure and pain reach a +certain intensity they are indistinguishable.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>One of the main obstacles to the cultivation +of poetry in the average sensible +man is an absurdly inflated notion of +the ridiculous.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The crudest excitement of the imaginative +faculty is to be preferred to a swinish +preoccupation with the gross physical +existence.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Ten</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The brain is the diplomatist which arranges +relations between our instinctive +self and the universe, and it fulfils its +mission when it provides for the maximum +of freedom to the instincts with +the minimum of friction.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eleven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>A woman who has beauty wants to +frame it in beauty. The eye is a sensualist, +and its appetites, once aroused, +grow. A beautiful woman takes the +same pleasure in the sight of another +beautiful woman as a man does; only +jealousy or fear prevents her from admitting +the pleasure.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twelve</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The beginning of wise living lies in the +control of the brain by the will.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Thirteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>To utter a jeremiad upon the decadence +of taste, to declare that literature is +going to the dogs because a fourth-rate +novel has been called a masterpiece and +has made someone’s fortune, would be +absurd. I have a strong faith that taste +is as good as ever it was, and that literature +will continue on its way undisturbed.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fourteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There is a loveliness of so imperious, absolute, +dazzling a kind that it banishes +from the hearts of men all moral conceptions, +all considerations of right and +wrong, and leaves therein nothing but +worship and desire.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fifteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>When homage is reiterated, when the +pleasure of obeying a command and +satisfying a caprice is begged for, when +roses are strewn, and even necks put +down in the path, one forgets to be +humble; one forgets that in meekness +alone lies the sole good; one confuses +deserts with the hazards of heredity.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Sixteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There are men who are capable of loving +a machine more deeply than they can +love a woman. They are among the +happiest men on earth.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seventeen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The uncultivated reader is content to +live wholly in and for the moment, +sentence by sentence. Keep him amused +and he will ask no more. You may delude him, +you may withhold from him +every single thing to which he is rightfully +entitled, but he will not care. The +more crude you are, the better will he +be pleased.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eighteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is only in the stress of fine ideas and +emotions that a man may be truly said +to live.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nineteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Oh, innocence! Oh, divine ignorance! Oh, +refusal! None knows your value save +her who has bartered you! And herein +is the woman’s tragedy.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>To extract from the brain, at will and +by will, concentration on a given idea +for even so short a period as half an hour +is an exceedingly difficult feat—and +a fatiguing! It needs perseverance.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>A merely literary crudity will affect the +large public neither one way nor the +other, since the large public is entirely +uninterested in questions of style; but +all other crudities appeal strongly to +that public.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-two</i></h3> + +<h4><i>“Cupid and Commonsense” produced.</i></h4> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Everyone who has driven a motor-car knows +the uncanny sensation that ensues +when for the first time in your life +you engage the clutch, and the Thing +beneath you begins mysteriously and +formidably to move. It is at once an +astonishment, a terror, and a delight. +I felt like that as I watched the progress +of my first play.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Can you see the sun over the viaduct at +Loughborough Junction of a morning, +and catch its rays in the Thames off +Dewar’s whisky monument, and not +shake with the joy of life? If so, you +and Shakespeare are not yet in communication.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Adults have never yet invented any institution, +festival or diversion specially +for the benefit of children. The +egoism of adults makes such an effort +impossible, and the ingenuity and pliancy +of children make it unnecessary. +The pantomime, for example, which is +now pre-eminently a diversion for children, +was created by adults for the +amusement of adults. Children have +merely accepted it and appropriated it. +Children, being helpless, are of course +fatalists and imitators. They take what +comes, and they do the best they can +with it. And when they have made +something their own that was adult, +they stick to it like leeches.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The living speak of the uncanniness of the +dead. It does not occur to them that +manifestations of human existence may +be uncanny to the dead.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There is no royal road to the control of +the brain. There is no patent dodge +about it, and no complicated function +which a plain person may not comprehend. +It is simply a question of: “I +will, <i>I</i> will, and I <i>will</i>.”</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>I knew that when love lasted, the credit +of the survival was due far more often +to the woman than to the man. The +woman must husband herself, dole herself +out, economise herself so that she might +be splendidly wasteful when need was. +The woman must plan, scheme, devise, +invent, reconnoitre, take precautions; +and do all this sincerely and lovingly in +the name and honour of love. A passion +for her is a campaign; and her deadliest +enemy is satiety.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Efficient living, living up to one’s best +standard, getting the last ounce of power +out of the machine with the minimum +of friction: these things depend on the +disciplined and vigorous condition of the +brain.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>In the world of books, as in every other +world, one-half does not know how the +other half lives. In literary matters the +literate seldom suspect the extreme simplicity +and <i>naïveté</i> of the illiterate. They +wilfully blind themselves to it; they are +afraid to face it.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The mysteriousness of woman vanishes +the instant you brutally face it. Boys +and ageing celibates are obsessed by the +mysteriousness of woman. The obsession +is a sign either of immaturity or +of morbidity. The mysteriousness of +woman,—take her, and see then if she +is mysterious!</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Thirty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Train journeys have too often been sorrowful +for me, so much so that the conception +itself of a train, crawling over +the country like a snake, or flying across +it like a winged monster, fills me with +melancholy. Trains loaded with human +parcels of sadness and illusion and brief +joy, wandering about, crossing, and +occasionally colliding in the murk of +existence; trains warmed and lighted in +winter; trains open to catch the air of +your own passage in summer; night-trains +that pierce the night with your +yellow, glaring eyes, and waken mysterious +villages, and leave the night behind +and run into the dawn as into a station; +trains that carry bread and meats for +the human parcels, and pillows and +fountains of fresh water; trains that +sweep haughtily and wearily indifferent +through the landscapes and the towns, +sufficient unto yourselves, hasty, panting, +formidable, and yet mournful entities: +I have understood you in your +arrogance and your pathos!</p> +</div> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<span class="pagenum2" id="Page_19">[19]</span> + +<h2 class="nobreak"><i>February</i></h2> +</div> + +<div class="hangingindent"> + +<h3><i>One</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The ecstasy of longing is better than +the assuaging of desire.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>As regards facts and ideas, the great +mistake made by the average well-intentioned +reader is that he is content with +the names of things instead of occupying +himself with the causes of things.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Time and increasing knowledge of the +true facts have dissipated for me the +melancholy and affecting legend of literary +talent going a-begging because of +the indifference of publishers. O young +author of talent, would that I could find +you and make you understand how the +publisher yearns for you as the lover for +his love.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The brain can be disciplined by learning +the habit of obedience. And it can learn +the habit of obedience by the practice +of concentration.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>You can attach any ideas you please to +music, but music, if you will forgive me +saying so, rejects them all equally. Art +has to do with emotions not with ideas, +and the great defect of literature is that +it can only express emotions by means +of ideas. What makes music the greatest +of all the arts is that it can express +emotions without ideas. Literature can +appeal to the soul only through the mind. +Music goes direct. Its language is a +language which the soul alone understands, +but which the soul can never +translate.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>If a man does not spend at least as much +time in actively and definitely thinking +about what he has read as he spent in +reading, he is simply insulting his author.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>He was of that small and lonely minority +of men who never know ambition, ardour, +zeal, yearning, tears; whose convenient +desires are capable of immediate satisfaction; +of whom it may be said that +they purchase a second-rate happiness +cheap at the price of an incapacity for +deep feeling.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>No man, except a greater author, can teach +an author his business.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Size is the quality which most strongly +and surely appeals to the imagination of +the multitude. Of all modern monuments +the Eiffel Tower and the Big +Wheel have aroused the most genuine +curiosity and admiration: they are the +biggest. As with this monstrous architecture +of metals, so with the fabric of +ideas and emotions: the attention of the +whole crowd can only be caught by an +audacious hugeness, an eye-smiting enormity +of dimensions so gross as to be +nearly physical.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Ten</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Genius apart, woman is usually more touchingly +lyrical than man in the yearning +for the ideal.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eleven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>I had fast in my heart’s keeping the new +truth that in the body, and the instincts +of the body, there should be no shame +but rather a frank, joyous pride.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twelve</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>A person is idle because his thoughts +dwell habitually on the instant pleasures +of idleness.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>By love I mean a noble and sensuous +passion, absorbing the energies of the +soul, fulfilling destiny, and reducing all +that has gone before it to the level of a +mere prelude.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fourteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>For myself, I have never valued work for +its own sake, and I never shall.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Fifteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>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 labour +is immense.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Sixteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>All who look into their experience will +admit that the failure to replace old +habits by new ones is due to the fact +that at the critical moment the brain +does not remember; it simply forgets.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seventeen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Many writers, and many clever writers, +use the art of literature merely to gain +an end which is connected with some +different art, or with no art. Such a +writer, finding himself burdened with a +message prophetic, didactic, or reforming, +discovers suddenly that he has the +imaginative gift, and makes his imagination +the servant of his intellect, +or of emotions which are not artistic +emotions.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Eighteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>I only value mental work for the more +full and more intense consciousness of +being alive which it gives me.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nineteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Whatever the vagaries of human nature, +the true philosopher is never surprised +by them. And one vagary is not more +strange than another.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>You can control nothing but your own +mind. Even your two-year-old babe +may defy you by the instinctive force of +its personality.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>To take the common grey things which +people know and despise, and, without +tampering, to disclose their epic significance, +their essential grandeur—that is +realism as distinguished from idealism +or romanticism. It may scarcely be, it +probably is not, the greatest art of all; +but it is art precious and indisputable.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There are few mental exercises better than +learning great poetry or prose by heart.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The British public will never be convinced +by argument. But two drops of +perspiration on the cheeks of a nice-looking +girl with a torn skirt and a +crushed hat will make it tremble for the +safety of its ideals, and twenty drops +will persuade it to sign anything for +the restoration of decency. You surely +don’t suppose that <i>argument</i> will be of +any use!</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Some people have a gift of conjuring +with conversations. They are almost +always frankly and openly interested +in themselves. You may seek to foil +them; you may even violently wrench +the conversation into other directions. +But every effort will be useless. They +will beat you. You had much better +lean back in your chair and enjoy their +legerdemain.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The voice of this spirit says that it has +lost every illusion about life, and that +life seems only the more beautiful. It +says that activity is but another form of +contemplation, pain but another form +of pleasure, power but another form of +weakness, hate but another form of love, +and that it is well these things should +be so. It says there is no end, only a +means; and that the highest joy is to +suffer, and the supreme wisdom is to +exist. If you will but live, it cries, that +grave but yet passionate voice—if you +will but live! Were there a heaven, and +you reached it, you could do no more +than live. The true heaven is here +where you live, where you strive and +lose, and weep and laugh. And the true +hell is here, where you forget to live, and +blind your eyes to the omnipresent and +terrible beauty of existence.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The most important preliminary to self-development +is the faculty of concentrating +at will.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Diaries, save in experienced hands, are apt +to get themselves done with the very +minimum of mental effort. They also +tend to an exaggeration of egotism, and +if they are left lying about they tend to +strife.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The English world of home is one of +the most perfectly organized microcosms +on this planet, not excepting the Indian +<i>purdah</i>. The product of centuries of +culture, it is regarded, not too absurdly, +as the fairest flower of Christian civilisation. +It exists chiefly, of course, for +women, but it could never have been +what it is had not men bound themselves +to respect the code which they made for +it. It is the fountain of refinement and +of consolation, the nursery of affection. +It has the peculiar faculty of nourishing +itself, for it implicitly denies the existence +of anything beyond its doorstep, save the +constitution, a bishop, a rector, the seaside, +Switzerland, and the respectful +poor.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>I have always been a bookman. From +adolescence books have been one of my +passions. Books not merely—and perhaps +not chiefly—as vehicles of learning +or knowledge, but books as books, books +as entities, books as beautiful things, +books as historical antiquities, books as +repositories of memorable associations. +Questions of type, ink, paper, margins, +watermarks, paginations, bindings, are +capable of really agitating me.</p> +</div></div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<span class="pagenum2" id="Page_29">[29]</span> + +<h2 class="nobreak"><i>March</i></h2> +</div> + +<div class="hangingindent"> + +<h3><i>One</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is characteristic of the literary artist +with a genuine vocation that his large +desire is, not to express in words any +particular thing, but to express <i>himself</i>, +the sum of his sensations. He feels the +vague, disturbing impulse to write long +before he has chosen his first subject +from the thousands of subjects which +present themselves, and which in the +future he is destined to attack.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>In the mental world what counts is not +numbers but co-ordination.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>In England, nearly all the most interesting +people are social reformers: and the +only circles of society in which you are +not bored, in which there is real conversation, +are the circles of social reform.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Anthology construction is one of the pleasantest +hobbies that a person who is +not mad about golf and bridge—that is +to say, a thinking person—can possibly +have.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>That part of my life which I conduct +by myself, without reference—or at +any rate without direct reference—to +others, I can usually manage in such a +way that the gods do not positively +weep at the spectacle thereof.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It’s quite impossible to believe that a +man is a genius, if you’ve been to school +with him, or even known his father.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is the privilege of only the greatest +painters not to put letters on the corners +of their pictures in order to keep other +painters from taking the credit for them +afterwards.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Your own mind has the power to transmute +every external phenomenon to its +own purposes.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Anything would be a success in London +on Sunday night. People are so grateful.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Ten</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The one cheerful item in a universe of +stony facts is that no one can harm anybody +except himself.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eleven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The eye that has learned to look life +full in the face without a quiver of the +lid should find nothing repulsive. Everything +that is, is the ordered and calculable +result of environment. Nothing can be +abhorrent, nothing blameworthy, nothing +contrary to nature. Can we exceed +nature? In the presence of the primeval +and ever-continuing forces of nature, +can we maintain our fantastic conceptions +of sin and of justice? We are, and +that is all we should dare to say.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twelve</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The art of life, the art of extracting all +its power from the human machine, does +not lie chiefly in processes of bookish-culture, +nor in contemplations of the +beauty and majesty of existence. It +lies chiefly in keeping the peace, the +whole peace, and nothing but the peace, +with those with whom one is “thrown.”</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>We have our ideals now, but when they +are mentioned we feel self-conscious and +uncomfortable, like a school-boy caught +praying.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fourteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>After the crest of the wave the trough—it +must be so; but how profound the +instinct which complains!</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fifteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The performance of some pianists is so +wonderful that it seems as if they were +crossing Niagara on a tight-rope, and +you tremble lest they should fall off.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Sixteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The secret of calm cheerfulness is kindliness; +no person can be consistently +cheerful and calm who does not consistently +think kind thoughts.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seventeen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is indubitable that a large amount of +what is known as self-improvement is +simply self-indulgence—a form of +pleasure which only incidentally improves +a particular part of the human +machine, and even that part to the neglect +of far more important parts.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eighteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The average man has this in common +with the most exceptional genius, that +his career in its main contours is governed +by his instincts.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nineteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The most beautiful things, and the most +vital things, and the most lasting things +are often mysterious and inexplicable +and sudden.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>An accurate knowledge of <i>any</i> subject, +coupled with a carefully nurtured +sense of the relativity of that subject +to other subjects, implies an enormous +self-development.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The great artist may force you to laugh, +or to wipe away a tear, but he accomplishes +these minor feats by the way. +What he mainly does is to <i>see</i> for you. +If, in presenting a scene, he does not +disclose aspects of it which you would +not have observed for yourself, then he +falls short of success. In a physical and +psychical sense power is visual, the +power of an eye seeing things always +afresh, virginally as though on the very +morn of creation.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is well, when one is judging a friend, +to remember that he is judging you +with the same god-like and superior +impartiality.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>He who speaks, speaks twice. His words +convey his thoughts, and his tone conveys +his mental attitude towards the +person spoken to.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The man who loses his temper often +thinks he is doing something rather fine +and majestic. On the contrary, so far +is this from being the fact, he is merely +making an ass of himself.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The female sex is prone to be inaccurate +and careless of apparently trivial detail, +because this is the general tendency of +mankind. In men destined for a business +or a profession, the proclivity is +harshly discouraged at an early stage. +In women, who usually are not destined +for anything whatever, it enjoys a merry +life, and often refuses to be improved +out of existence when the sudden need +arises. No one by taking thought can +deracinate the mental habits of, say, +twenty years.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Kindliness of heart is not the greatest of +human qualities—and its general effect +on the progress of the world is not entirely +beneficent—but it is the greatest +of human qualities in friendship.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There is a certain satisfaction in hopelessness +amid the extreme of misery. +You press it to you as the martyr +clutched the burning fagot. You enjoy +it. You savour, piquantly, your woe, +your shame, your abjectness, the failure +of your philosophy. You celebrate the +perdition of the man in you. You want +to talk about it brazenly; even to exaggerate it, +and to swagger over it.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The great public is no fool. It is huge +and simple and slow in mental processes, +like a good-humoured giant, easy to +please and grateful for diversion. But +it has a keen sense of its own dignity; +it will not be trifled with; it resents for +ever the tongue in the cheek.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span></p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The beauty of horses, timid creatures, +sensitive and graceful and irrational as +young girls, is a thing apart; and what +is strange is that their vast strength +does not seem incongruous with it. To +be above that proud and lovely organism, +listening, apprehensive, palpitating, nervous +far beyond the human, to feel one’s +self almost part of it by intimate contact, +to yield to it, and make it yield, to draw +from it into one’s self some of its exultant +vitality—in a word, to ride—I can +comprehend a fine enthusiasm for that.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The respectable portion of the male sex +in England may be divided into two +classes, according to its method and +manner of complete immersion in water. +One class, the more dashing, dashes into +a cold tub every morning. Another, the +more cleanly, sedately takes a warm bath +every Saturday night. There can be no +doubt that the former class lends tone +and distinction to the country, but the +latter is the nation’s backbone.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Thirty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Although you may easily practise upon +the credulity of a child in matters of +fact, you cannot cheat his moral and +social judgment. He will add you up, +and he will add anybody up, and he will +estimate conduct, upon principles of +his own and in a manner terribly impartial. +Parents have no sterner nor +more discerning critics than their own +children.</p> +</div></div> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<span class="pagenum2" id="Page_39">[39]</span> + +<h2 class="nobreak"><i>April</i></h2> +</div> + +<div class="hangingindent"> + +<h3><i>One</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>A person’s character is, and can be, +nothing else but the total result of his +habits of thought.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Beware of hope, and beware of ambition! +Each is excellently tonic, like German +competition, in moderation, but all of +you are suffering from self-indulgence in +the first, and very many of you are ruining +your constitutions with the second.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>As a matter of fact, people “indulge” in +remorse; it is a somewhat vicious form +of spiritual pleasure.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>When a thing is thoroughly well done it +often has the air of being a miracle.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>After all the shattering discoveries of +science and conclusions of philosophy, +mankind has still to live with dignity +amid hostile nature, and in the presence +of an unknowable power, and mankind +can only succeed in this tremendous feat +by the exercise of faith and of that +mutual goodwill which is based in sincerity +and charity.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>All the days that are to come will more +or less resemble the present day, until +you die.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>In literature, when nine hundred and +ninety-nine souls ignore you, but the +thousandth buys your work, or at least +borrows it—that is called enormous +popularity.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>If life is not a continual denial of the +past, then it is nothing.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The profoundest belief of the average +man is that virtue ought never to be its +own reward. Shake that belief and you +commit a cardinal sin; you disturb his +mental quietude.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Ten</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is notorious that the smaller the community, +and the more completely it +is self-contained, the deeper will be its +preoccupation with its own trifling +affairs.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eleven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>To my mind, most societies with a moral +aim are merely clumsy machines for +doing simple jobs with the maximum of +friction, expense and inefficiency. I +should define the majority of these societies +as a group of persons each of whom +expects the others to do something very +wonderful.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twelve</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There is nothing like a sleepless couch +for a clear vision of one’s environment.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Thirteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The supreme muddlers of living are often +people of quite remarkable intellectual +faculty, with a quite remarkable gift of +being wise for others.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fourteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Our leading advertisers have richly proved +that the public will believe anything if +they are told of it often enough.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fifteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Here’s a secret. No writer likes writing, +at least not one in a hundred, and the +exception, ten to one, is a howling mediocrity. +That’s a fact. But all the same, +they’re miserable if they don’t write.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Sixteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The first and noblest aim of imaginative +literature is not either to tickle or to +stab the sensibilities, but to render a +coherent view of life’s apparent incoherence, +to give shape to the amorphous, +to discover beauty which was hidden, to +reveal essential truth.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Seventeen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There is a theory that a great public can +appreciate a great novel, that the highest +modern expression of literary art need not +appeal in vain to the average reader. +And I believe this to be true—provided +that such a novel is written with intent, +and with a full knowledge of the peculiar +conditions to be satisfied; I believe that +a novel could be written which would +unite in a mild ecstasy of praise the two +extremes—the most inclusive majority +and the most exclusive minority.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eighteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“Give us more brains, Lord!” ejaculated +a great writer. Personally, I think he +would have been wiser if he had asked +first for the power to keep in order such +brains as we have.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nineteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Under the incentive of a woman’s eyes, +of what tremendous efforts is a clever +man not capable, and, deprived of it, to +what depths of stagnation will he not +descend!</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Elegance is a form of beauty. It not +only enhances beauty, but it is the one +thing which will console the eye for the +absence of beauty.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There are several ways of entering upon +journalism. One is at once to found or +purchase a paper, and thus achieve the +editorial chair at a single step. This +course is often adopted in novels, sometimes +with the happiest results; and +much less often in real life, where the +end is invariably and inevitably painful.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Existence rightly considered is a fair compromise +between two instincts—the instinct +of hoping one day to live, and the instinct +to live here and now.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into +which nothing harmful can enter except +by your permission.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The average man is not half enough of +an egotist. If egotism means a terrific +interest in one’s self, egotism is absolutely +essential to efficient living.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Events have no significance except by virtue +of the ideas from which they spring; the +clash of events is the clash of ideas, and +out of this clash the moral lesson inevitably +emerges, whether we ask for it or +no. Hence every great book is a great +moral book, and there is a true and fine +sense in which the average reader is justified +in regarding art as the handmaid +of morality.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-six</i></h3> + +<h4><i>William Shakespeare’s Birthday</i></h4> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Shakespeare is “taught” in schools; that is +to say, the Board of Education and all +authorities pedagogic bind themselves +together in a determined effort to make +every boy in the land a lifelong enemy +of Shakespeare. It is a mercy they don’t +“teach” Blake.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-seven</i></h3> + +<h4><i>Herbert Spencer’s Birthday</i></h4> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There are those who assert that Spencer +was not a supreme genius! At any rate he +taught me intellectual courage; he taught +me that nothing is sacred that will not +bear inspection; and I adore his memory.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Unite the colossal with the gaudy, and +you will not achieve the sublime; but, +unless you are deterred by humility and +a sense of humour, you may persuade +yourself that you have done so, and +certainly most people will credit you +with the genuine feat.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The average reader (like Goethe and Ste. +Beuve) has his worse and his better +self, and there are times when he will +yield to the former; but on the whole his +impulses are good. In every writer who +earns his respect and enduring love there +is some central righteousness, which is +capable of being traced and explained, +and at which it is impossible to sneer.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Thirty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Literature is the art of using words. This +is not a platitude, but a truth of the +first importance, a truth so profound +that many writers never get down to it, +and so subtle that many other writers +who think they see it never in fact +really comprehend it. The business of +the author is with words. The practisers +of other arts, such as music and painting, +deal with ideas and emotions, but +only the author has to deal with them by +means of words. Words are his exclusive +possession among creative artists and +craftsmen. They are his raw material, +his tools and instruments, his manufactured +product, his alpha and omega. +He may abound in ideas and emotions +of the finest kind, but those ideas and +emotions cannot be said to have an +effective existence until they are expressed; +they are limited to the extent +of their expression; and their expression +is limited to the extent of the author’s +skill in the use of words. I smile when +I hear people say, “If I could <i>write</i>, if +I could only put down what I feel—!”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span> +Such people beg the whole question. The +ability to <i>write</i> is the sole thing peculiar +to literature—not the ability to think +nor the ability to feel, but the ability +to write, to utilise words.</p> +</div></div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<span class="pagenum2" id="Page_49">[49]</span> + +<h2 class="nobreak"><i>May</i></h2> +</div> + +<div class="hangingindent"> + +<h3><i>One</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Only a small minority of authors overwrite +themselves. Most of the good and the +tolerable ones do not write enough.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The entire business of success is a gigantic +tacit conspiracy on the part of the minority +to deceive the majority.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There are at least three women-journalists +in Europe to-day whose influence is +felt in Cabinets and places where they +govern (proving that sex is not a bar +to the proper understanding of <i>la haute +politique</i>); whereas the man who dares +to write on fashions does not exist.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Habits are the very dickens to change.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Not only is art a factor in life; it is a +factor in all lives. The division of the +world into two classes, one of which has +a monopoly of what is called “artistic +feeling,” is arbitrary and false. Everyone +is an artist, more or less; that is to +say, there is no person quite without that +faculty of poetising, which, by seeing +beauty, creates beauty, and which, when +it is sufficiently powerful and articulate, +constitutes the musical composer, the +architect, the imaginative writer, the +sculptor, and the painter.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Is it nothing to you to learn to understand +that the world is not a dull place?</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>In neither faith nor enthusiasm can a +child compete with a convinced adult. +No child could believe in anything as +passionately as the modern millionaire +believes in money, or as the modern +social reformer believes in the virtue of +Acts of Parliament.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Literature, instead of being an accessory, is +the fundamental <i>sine qua non</i> of complete +living.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>No novelist, however ingenious, who does +not write what he feels, and what, by its +careful finish, approximately pleases himself, +can continue to satisfy the average +reader. He may hang for years precariously +on the skirts of popularity, but in +the end he will fall; he will be found out.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Ten</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Only the fool and the very young expect +happiness. The wise merely hope to be +interested, at least not to be bored, in +their passage through this world. Nothing +is so interesting as love and grief, +and the one involves the other.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eleven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>One of the commonest characteristics of +the successful man is his idleness, his +immense capacity for wasting time.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twelve</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>People who regard literary taste simply +as an accomplishment, and literature +simply as a distraction, will never truly +succeed, either in acquiring the accomplishment +or in using it half-acquired as +a distraction.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The finest souls have their reactions, their +rebellions against wise reason.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fourteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>My theory is that politeness, instead of +decreasing with intimacy—should increase! +And when I say “Politeness” +I mean common, superficial politeness. +I don’t mean the deep-down sort of +thing that you can only detect with a +divining-rod.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fifteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Marcus Aurelius is assuredly regarded as +the greatest of writers in the human +machine school, and not to read him +daily is considered by many to be a +bad habit.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Sixteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Part of the secret of Balzac’s unique power +over the reader is the unique tendency +of his own interest in the thing to be told.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seventeen</i></h3> + +<h4><i>“Anna of the Five Towns” finished 1901</i></h4> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The art of fiction is the art of telling a +story. This statement is not so obvious +and unnecessary as it may seem. Most +beginners and many “practised hands” +attend to all kinds of things before they +attend to the story. With them the +art of fiction is the art of describing +character or landscape, of getting “atmosphere,” +and of being humorous, pathetic, +flippant, or terrifying; while the +story is a perfunctory excuse for these +feats. They are so busy with the traditional +paraphernalia of fiction, with the +tricks of the craft, that what should +be the principal business is reduced to +a subsidiary task. They forget that +character, landscape, atmosphere, humour, +pathos, etc., are not ends in +themselves, but only means toward an +end.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Eighteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>How true it is that the human soul is +solitary, that content is the only true +riches, and that to be happy we must be +good.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nineteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Men of letters who happen to have genius +do not write for men of letters. They +write, as Wagner was proud to say he +composed, for the ordinary person.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Great success never depends on the practice +of the humbler virtues, though it may +occasionally depend on the practice of +the prouder vices.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“I’ve been to the National Gallery twice, +and, upon my word, I was almost the +only person there! And it’s free, too! +People don’t <i>want</i> picture-galleries. If +they did, they’d go. Who ever saw a +public-house empty, or Peter Robinson’s? +And you have to pay there!”</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>He who has not been “presented to the +freedom” of literature has not wakened +up out of his prenatal sleep. He is +merely not born. He can’t see; he +can’t hear; he can’t feel in any full +sense. He can only eat his dinner.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>All the arts are a conventionalisation, an +ordering of nature.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The aim of literary study is not to amuse +the hours of leisure; it is to awake oneself, +it is to be alive, to intensify one’s +capacity for pleasure, for sympathy, +and for comprehension.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Like every aging artist of genuine accomplishment, +he knew—none better—that +there is no satisfaction save the +satisfaction of fatigue after honest endeavour. +He knew—none better—that +wealth and glory and fine clothes +are naught, and that striving is all.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Prepare to live by all means, but for +Heaven’s sake do not forget to live.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-seven</i></h3> + +<h4><i>My Birthday</i></h4> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Sometimes I suddenly halt and address +myself: “You may be richer or you may +be poorer; you may live in greater pomp +and luxury, or in less. The point is, that +you will always be, essentially, what you +are now. You have no real satisfaction +to look forward to except the satisfaction +of continually inventing, fancying, +imagining, scribbling. Say another +thirty years of these emotional ingenuities, +these interminable variations +on the theme of beauty. Is it good +enough?” And I answered: “Yes.” +But who knows? Who can preclude +the regrets of the dying couch?</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The balanced sanity of a great mind makes +impossible exaggeration, and, therefore, +distortion.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>No art that is not planned in form is +worth consideration, and no life that is +not planned in convention can ever be +satisfactory.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The value of restraint is seldom inculcated +upon women. Indeed, its opposites—gush +and a tendency to hysteria—are +regarded, in many respectable quarters, +as among the proper attributes of true +womanliness; attributes to be artistically +cultivated.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There grows in the North Country a certain +kind of youth of whom it may be +said that he is born to be a Londoner. +The metropolis, and everything that +appertains to it, that comes down from +it, that goes up into it, has for him +an imperious fascination. Long before +schooldays are over he learns to take a +doleful pleasure in watching the exit +of the London train from the railway<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span> +station. He stands by the hot engine +and envies the very stoker. Gazing +curiously into the carriages he wonders +that men and women, who in a few +hours will be treading streets called +Piccadilly and the Strand, can contemplate +the immediate future with so +much apparent calmness; some of them +even have the audacity to look bored. +He finds it difficult to keep from throwing +himself in the guard’s van as it glides +past him; and not until the last coach +is a speck upon the distance does he turn +away and, nodding absently to the +ticket-clerk, who knows him well, go +home to nurse a vague ambition and +dream of town.</p> +</div></div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum2" id="Page_59">[59]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak"><i>June</i></h2> +</div> + +<div class="hangingindent"> + +<h3><i>One</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>To cultivate and nourish a grievance +when you have five hundred pounds in +your pocket, in cash, is the most difficult +thing in the world.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The full beauty of an activity is never +brought out until it is subjected to +discipline and strict ordering and nice +balancing.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The unfading charm of classical music is +that you never tire of it.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The spirit of literature is unifying; it joins +the candle and the star, and by the +magic of an image shows that the beauty +of the greater is in the less.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>If people, by merely wishing to do so, +could regularly and seriously read, observe, +write, and use every faculty and +sense, there would be very little mental +inefficiency.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Laws and rules, forms and ceremonies, +are good in themselves, from a merely +æsthetic point of view, apart from their +social value and necessity.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Fashionable women have a manner of sitting +down quite different from that of +ordinary women. They only touch the +back of the chair at the top. They +don’t loll but they only escape lolling +by dint of gracefulness. It is an affair +of curves, slants, descents, nicely calculated. +They elaborately lead your eye +downwards over gradually increasing +expanses, and naturally you expect to see +their feet—and you don’t see their +feet. The thing is apt to be disturbing +to unhabituated beholders.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There are moments in the working day +of every novelist when he feels deeply +that anything—road-mending, shop-walking, +housebreaking—would be +better than this eternal torture of the +brain; but such moments pass.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>During a long and varied career as a +bachelor, I have noticed that marriage +is usually the death of politeness between +a man and a woman. I have +noticed that the stronger the passion +the weaker the manners.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Ten</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>My sense of security amid the collisions +of existence lies in the firm consciousness +that just as my body is the servant of +my mind, so is my mind the servant +of <i>me</i>.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eleven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The fault of the epoch is the absence of +meditativeness.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twelve</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>People who don’t want to live, people +who would sooner hibernate than feel +intensely, will be wise to eschew +literature.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>No one is so sure of achieving the aims +of the literary craftsman as the man +who has something to say and wishes +to say it simply and have done with it.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fourteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The mind can only be conquered by +regular meditation, by deciding beforehand +what direction its activity ought to +take, and insisting that its activity take +that direction; also by never leaving it +idle, undirected, masterless, to play at +random like a child in the streets after +dark.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fifteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The enterprise of forming one’s literary +taste is an agreeable one; if it is not +agreeable it cannot succeed.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Sixteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The attitude of the average decent person +towards the classics of his own tongue +is one of distrust—I had almost said, +of fear.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seventeen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Am I, a portion of the Infinite Force that +existed billions of years ago, and which +will exist billions of years hence, going to +allow myself to be worried by any terrestrial +physical or mental event? I am not.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eighteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There is not a successful inexpert author +writing to-day who would not be more +successful—who would not be better +esteemed and in receipt of a larger income—if +he had taken the trouble to +become expert. Skill does count; skill +is always worth its cost in time and +labour.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nineteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is easier to go down a hill than up, but +the view is from the top.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>For me there is no supremacy in art. +When fifty artists have contrived to be +supreme, supremacy becomes impossible. +Take a little song by Grieg. It is perfect, +it is supreme. No one could be +greater than Grieg was great when he +wrote that song. The whole last act +of <i>The Twilight of the Gods</i> is not greater +than a little song of Grieg’s.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>We talked books. We just simply enumerated +books without end, praising +or damning them, and arranged authors +in neat pews, like cattle in classes at an +agricultural show. No pastime is more +agreeable to people who have the book +disease, and none more quickly fleets +the hours, and none is more delightfully +futile.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The law of gravity is absurd and indefensible +when you fall downstairs; but +you obey it.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is difficult to make a reputation, but +it is even more difficult seriously to +mar a reputation once properly made—so +faithful is the public.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>That which has cost a sacrifice is always +endeared.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>If literary aspirants genuinely felt that +literature was the art of using words, +bad, slipshod writing—writing that +stultifies the thought and emotion which +it is designed to render effective—would +soon be a thing of the past. For they +would begin at the beginning as apprentices +to all other arts are compelled +to. The serious student of painting who +began his apprenticeship by trying to +paint a family group, would be regarded +as a lunatic. But the literary aspirant +who begins with a novel is precisely that +sort of lunatic, and the fact that he +sometimes gets himself into print does +not in the least mitigate his lunacy.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>In spite of all the differences which we +have invented, mankind is a fellowship +of brothers, overshadowed by insoluble +and fearful mysteries, and dependent +upon mutual goodwill and trust for the +happiness it may hope to achieve.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The brain is a servant, exterior to the +central force of the Ego. If it is out of +control, the reason is not that it is uncontrollable +but merely that its discipline +has been neglected.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>I have been told by one of our greatest +novelists that he constantly reads the +dictionary, and that in his youth he +read the dictionary through several +times. I may recount the anecdote of +Buckle, the historian of civilisation, who, +when a certain dictionary was mentioned +in terms of praise, said: “Yes, it is one +of the few dictionaries I have read +through with pleasure.”</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The public may, and generally does, +admire a great artist. But it begins +(and sometimes ends) by admiring him +for the wrong things. Shakespeare is +more highly regarded for his philosophy +than for his poetry, as the applause at +any performance of “Hamlet” will +prove. Balzac conquers by that untamed +exuberance and those crude effects +of melodrama which are the least valuable +parts of him.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>You cannot divide literature into two +elements and say: This is matter and +that style. Further, the significance +and the worth of literature are to be +comprehended and assessed in the same +way as the significance and the worth +of any other phenomenon: by the exercise +of common-sense. Common-sense +will tell you that nobody, not even a +genius, can be simultaneously vulgar +and distinguished, or beautiful and ugly, +or precise and vague, or tender and +harsh. And common-sense will therefore<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span> +tell you that to try to set up vital +contradictions between matter and style +is absurd. If you refer literature to the +standards of life, common-sense will at +once decide which quality should count +heaviest in your esteem.</p> +</div></div> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<span class="pagenum2" id="Page_69">[69]</span> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="July"><i>July</i></h2> +</div> + +<div class="hangingindent"> +<h3><i>One</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>When one has really something to say, +one does not use clichés; one cannot.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The extinguishing of desire, with an accompanying +indifference, be it high or low, +is bad for youth.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Do you suppose that if the fame of +Shakespeare depended on the man in +the street, it would survive a fortnight?</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Common-sense will solve any problem—any!—always +provided it is employed +simultaneously with politeness.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>London is the most provincial town in +England—invariably vulgar, reactionary, +hysterical, and behind the rest of +the country. A nice sort of place England +would be if we in the provinces had +to copy London.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Progress is the gradual result of the unending +battle between human reason +and human instinct, in which the former +slowly but surely wins.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>As an athlete trains, as an acrobat painfully +tumbles in private, so must the +literary aspirant write.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>A classic is a work which gives pleasure +to the minority which is intensely and +permanently interested in literature.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is said that geography makes history. +In England, and especially in London, +weather makes a good deal of history.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Ten</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The one primary essential to literary taste +is a hot interest in literature. If you +have that, all the rest will come.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eleven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>In the Five Towns human nature is +reported to be so hard that you can +break stones on it. Yet sometimes it +softens, and then we have one of our +rare idylls of which we are very proud, +while pretending not to be. The soft +and delicate South would possibly not +esteem highly our idylls, as such. Nevertheless +they are our idylls, idyllic for us, +and reminding us, by certain symptoms, +that, though we never cry, there is concealed +somewhere within our bodies a +fount of happy tears.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twelve</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Reason is the basis of personal dignity.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is by the passionate few that the renown +of genius is kept alive from one +generation to another.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fourteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>We are all of us the same in essence; +what separates us is merely differences +in our respective stages of evolution.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fifteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is well known that dignity will only +bleed while you watch it. Avert your +eyes and it instantly dries up.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Sixteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>All literature is the expression of feeling, +of passion, of emotion, caused by a +sensation of the interestingness of life.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Seventeen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Just as science is the development of +common-sense, so is literature the development +of common daily speech.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eighteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Every man who thinks clearly can write +clearly, if not with grace and technical +correctness.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nineteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is important, if you wish ultimately to +have a wide, catholic taste, to guard +against the too common assumption +that nothing modern will stand comparison +with the classics.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>In the matter of its own special activities +the brain is usually undisciplined +and unreliable. We never know what +it will do next.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It’s the dodge of every begging-letter writer +in England to mark his envelope “Private +and Urgent.”</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Women grow old; women cease to learn; +but men, never.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>In literature, but in nothing else, I am +a propagandist; I am not content to +keep my opinion and let others keep +theirs. To have a worthless book in my +house (save in the way of business), to +know that any friend is enjoying it, +actually distresses me. That book must +go, the pretensions of that book must be +exposed, if I am to enjoy peace of mind.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>I have often thought: If a son could look +into a mother’s heart, what an eyeopener +he would have!</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>When a writer expresses his individuality +and his mood with accuracy, lucidity, +and sincerity, and with an absence of +ugliness, then he achieves good style. +Style—it cannot be too clearly understood—is +not a certain splendid something +which the writer adds to his +meaning. It is <i>in</i> the meaning; it is +that part of the meaning which specially +reflects his individuality and his mood.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Crime is simply a convenient monosyllable +which we apply to what happens +when the brain and the heart come into +conflict and the brain is defeated.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Reflect that, as a rule, the people whom +you have come to esteem communicated +themselves to you gradually, that they +did not begin the entertainment with +fireworks.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>To devise the contents of an issue, to +plan them, to balance them; to sail +with this wind and tack against that; +to keep a sensitive, cool finger on the +faintly beating pulse of the terrible +many-headed patron; to walk in a +straight line through a forest black as +midnight; to guess the riddle of the circulation-book +week by week; to know +by instinct why Smiths sent in a repeat +order, or why Simpkins’ was ten quires +less; to keep one eye on the majestic +march of the world, and the other on +the vagaries of a bazaar-reporter who +has forgotten the law of libel; these +things, and seventy-seven others, are +the real journalism. It is these things +that make editors sardonic, grey, +unapproachable.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>I will be bold enough to say that quite +seventy per cent. of ambition is never +realised at all, and that ninety per cent. +of all realised ambition is fruitless.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Thirty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>To comply with the regulations ordained +by English Society for the conduct of +successful painters, he ought, first, to +have taken the elementary precaution +of being born in the United States. He +ought, after having refused all interviews +for months, to have ultimately granted +a special one to a newspaper with the +largest circulation. He ought to have +returned to England, grown a mane +and a tufted tail, and become the king +of beasts; or at least to have made a +speech at a banquet about the noble and +purifying mission of art. Assuredly, he +ought to have painted the portrait of his +father or grandfather as an artisan to +prove that he was not a snob.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Women enjoy a reputation for slipshod +style. They have earned it. A long +and intimate familiarity with the manuscript +of hundreds of women-writers, +renowned and otherwise, has convinced +me that not ten per cent. of them can +be relied upon to satisfy even the most<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span> +ordinary tests in spelling, grammar, and +punctuation. I do not hesitate to say +that if twenty of the most honoured +and popular women-writers were asked +to sit for an examination in these simple +branches of learning, the general result +(granted that a few might emerge with +credit) would not only startle themselves, +but would provide innocent amusement +for the rest of mankind.</p> +</div></div> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<span class="pagenum2" id="Page_79">[79]</span> + +<h2 class="nobreak"><i>August</i></h2> +</div> + +<div class="hangingindent"> + +<h3><i>One</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>My theory is that if a really big concern +is properly organized, the boss ought to +be absolutely independent of all routine. +He ought to be free for anything that +turns up unexpectedly.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Often I have felt that: “I know enough, +I feel enough. If my future is as long as +my past, I shall still not be able to put +down the tenth part of what I have +already acquired.”</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>In journalism, as probably in no other +profession, success depends wholly upon +the loyal co-operation, the perfect reliability, +of a number of people—some +great, some small, but none irresponsible.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The significance and the worth of literature +are to be comprehended and assessed +in the same way as the significance and +the worth of any other phenomenon: by +the exercise of common-sense.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>All wrong-doing is done in the sincere belief +that it is the best thing to do.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There is always a mental inferior handy, +just as there is always a being more unhappy +than we are.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Often have I said inwardly: “World, +when I talk with you, dine with you, +wrangle with you, love you, and hate +you, I condescend.” Every artist has +said that. People call it conceit; people +may call it what they please.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The artistic pleasures of an uncultivated +mind are generally violent.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Literature cannot be said to have served +its true purpose until it has been translated +into the actual life of him who +reads.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Ten</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>When you cannot express yourself, depend +upon it that you have nothing +precise to express.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eleven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Monotony, solitude, are essential to the +full activity of the artist. Just as a horse +is seen best when coursing alone over a +great plain, so the fierce and callous +egotism of the artist comes to its perfection +in a vast expanse of custom, +leisure, and apparently vacuous reverie.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twelve</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>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.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>We can no more spend all our waking +hours in consciously striving towards +higher things than we can dine exclusively +off jam.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fourteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>All spending is a matter of habit.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fifteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The views from Richmond Hill or Hindhead, +or along Pall Mall at sunset, the +smell of the earth, the taste of fruit and +of kisses—these things are unaffected +by the machinations of trusts and the +hysteria of stock exchanges.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Sixteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>If there is one point common to all classics, +it is the absence of exaggeration.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seventeen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is only people of small moral stature +who have to stand on their dignity.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eighteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>When you live two and a half miles from +a railway you can cut a dash on an income +which in London spells omnibus +instead of cab. For myself, I have a +profound belief in the efficacy of cutting +a dash.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nineteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>No one can write correctly without deliberately +and laboriously learning how +to write correctly. On the other hand, +everyone can learn to write correctly +who takes sufficient trouble. Correct +writing is a mechanical accomplishment; +it could be acquired by a stockbroker.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>An understanding appreciation of literature +means an understanding appreciation of +the world, and it means nothing else.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Much ingenuity with a little money is vastly +more profitable and amusing than much +money without ingenuity.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Nothing is easier than to explain an accomplished +fact in a nice, agreeable, conventional +way.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Literature is the art of using words. This +is not a platitude, but a truth of the +first importance, a truth so profound +that many writers never get down to it, +and so subtle that many other writers +who think they see it never in fact really +comprehend it.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>In the choice of reading the individual +must count; caprice must count, for +caprice is often the truest index to the +individuality.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There is an infection in the air of London, +a zymotic influence which is the mysterious +cause of unnaturalness, pose, affectation, +artificiality, moral neuritis, and +satiety. One loses grasp of the essentials +in an undue preoccupation with the +vacuities which society has invented. +The distractions are too multiform. One +never gets a chance to talk common-sense +with one’s soul.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>An early success is a snare. The inexperienced +author takes too much for +granted. Conceit overcomes him. He +regards himself with an undue seriousness. +He thinks that he is founded on +granite for ever.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The splendid pertinacity and ingenuity +of the American journalist in wringing +copy out of any and every side of existence +cannot fail to quicken the pulse +of those who are accustomed to the +soberer, narrower, sleepier ways of English +newspapers. Fleet Street pretends +to despise and contemn American methods, +yet a gradual Americanising of the +English press is always taking place, +with results on the whole admirable.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Stand defiantly on your own feet, and do +not excuse yourself to yourself.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>This is a matter of daily observation: +that people are frantically engaged in +attempting to get hold of things which, +by universal experience, are hideously +disappointing to those who have obtained +possession of them.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Thirty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is a current impression that style is +something apart from, something foreign +to, matter—a beautiful robe which, once +it is found, may be used to clothe the +nudity of matter. Young writers wander +forth searching for style, as one searches +for that which is hidden. They might +employ themselves as profitably in looking +for the noses on their faces. For +style is personal, as much a portion of +one’s self as the voice. It is within, not +without; it needs only to be elicited, +brought to light.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>When I had been in London a decade, +I stood aside from myself and reviewed +my situation with the god-like and detached +impartiality of a trained artistic +observer. And what I saw was a young +man who pre-eminently knew his way +about, and who was apt to be rather too +complacent over this fact; a young man +with some brilliance but far more shrewdness; +a young man with a highly developed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span> +faculty for making a little go +a long way; a young man who was +accustomed to be listened to when he +thought fit to speak, and who was decidedly +more inclined to settle questions +than to raise them.</p> +</div></div> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<span class="pagenum2" id="Page_89">[89]</span> + +<h2 class="nobreak"><i>September</i></h2> +</div> + +<div class="hangingindent"> + +<h3><i>One</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is of no use beginning to air one’s +views until one has collected an +audience.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>A man whom fate had pitched into a +canal might accomplish miracles in the +way of rendering himself amphibian: he +might stagger the world by the spectacle +of his philosophy under amazing difficulties; +people might pay sixpence a +head to come and see him; but he +would be less of a nincompoop if he +climbed out and arranged to live definitely +on the bank.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The contemplation of hills is uplifting to +the soul; it leads to inspiration and induces +nobility of character.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Plot is the primary thing in fiction. Only +a very clever craftsman can manipulate +a feeble plot so as to make it even passably +interesting. Whereas, the clumsiest +bungler in narration cannot altogether +spoil a really sound plot.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It cannot be too clearly understood that +the professional author, the man who +depends entirely on his pen for the +continuance of breath, and whose income +is at the mercy of an illness or a headache, +is eternally compromising between +glory and something more edible and +warmer at nights. He labours, in the +first place, for food, shelter, tailors, a +woman, European travel, horses, stalls +at the opera, good cigars, ambrosial +evenings in restaurants; and he gives +glory the best chance he can. I am not +speaking of geniuses with a mania for +posterity; I am speaking of human +beings.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The average man flourishes and finds his +ease in an atmosphere of peaceful routine. +Men destined for success flourish +and find their ease in an atmosphere of +collision and disturbance.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There are simply thousands of agreeable +and good girls who can accomplish +herring-bone, omelettes, and simultaneous +equations in a breath, as it were. +They are all over the kingdom, and may +be seen in the streets and lanes thereof +about half-past eight in the morning and +again about five o’clock in the evening. +But the fact is not generally known. +Only the stern and base members of +School Boards or Education Committees +know it. And they are so used to marvels +that they make nothing of them.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>In the sea of literature every part communicates +with every other part; there +are no land-locked lakes.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>With an obedient, disciplined brain a man +may live always right up to the standard +of his best moments.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Ten</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>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.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eleven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>If I have an aptitude for anything at all +in letters, it is for criticism. Whenever +I read a book of imagination, I am +instantly filled with ideas concerning it; +I form definite views about its merit or +demerit, and, having formed them, I hold +those views with strong conviction. +Denial of them rouses me; I must +thump the table in support of them; I +must compel people to believe that what +I say is true; I cannot argue without +getting serious, in spite of myself.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twelve</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The great convenience of masterpieces is +that they are so astonishingly lucid.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is as well not to chatter too much +about what one is doing, and not to +betray a too-pained sadness at the spectacle +of a whole world deliberately wasting +so many hours out of every day, and +therefore never really living. It will +be found, ultimately, that in taking care +of one’s self one has quite all one can do.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fourteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Think as well as read. I know people +who read and read, and, for all the good +it does them, they might just as well cut +bread-and-butter. They take to reading +as better men take to drink. They fly +through the shires of literature on a +motor-car, their sole object being motion. +They will tell you how many books +they have read in a year.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Fifteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The mass could not, and never at any +period of history did, appreciate fine art, +but could and would appreciate and +support passable deteriorations of fine +art.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Sixteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Honesty, in literature as in life, is the quality +that counts first and counts last.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seventeen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>No author ever lived who could write a +page without giving himself away.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eighteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>To be one’s natural self is the most +difficult thing in literature. To be one’s +natural self in a drawing-room full of +observant eyes is scarcely the gift of +the simple debutant, but rather of the +experienced diner-out. So in literature: +it is not the expert but the unpractised +beginner who is guilty of artificiality.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Nineteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Much nonsense has been talked about +the short story. It has been asserted +that Englishmen cannot write artistic +short stories, that the short story does +not come naturally to the Anglo-Saxon. +Whereas the truth is that nearly all the +finest short-story writers in the world to-day +are Englishmen, and some of the +most wonderful short stories ever written +have been written by Englishmen within +the last twenty years.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>If a book really moves you to anger, the +chances are that it is a good book.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>In the cultivation of the mind one of +the most important factors is precisely +the feeling of strain, of difficulty, of a +task which one part of you is anxious +to achieve and another part of you is +anxious to shirk.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The very greatest poetry can only be +understood and savoured by people who +have put themselves through a considerable +mental discipline. To others it is +an exasperating weariness.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-three</i></h3> + +<h4><i>Samuel Johnson’s Birthday</i></h4> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Even Johnson’s Dictionary is packed with +emotion.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>All blame, uttered or unexpressed, is wrong. +I do not blame myself. I can explain +myself to myself. I can invariably +explain myself.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>When one has thoroughly got imbued +into one’s head the leading truth that +nothing happens without a cause, one +grows not only large-minded, but large-hearted.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>If an editor knows not peace, he knows +power. In Fleet Street, as in other +streets, the population divides itself into +those who want something and those +who have something to bestow; those +who are anxious to give a lunch, and +those who deign occasionally to accept +a lunch; those who have an axe to grind, +and those who possess the grindstone.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Regard, for a moment, the average household +in the light of a business organisation +for lodging and feeding a group +of individuals; contrast its lapses, +makeshifts, delays, irregularities, continual +excuses with the awful precision +of a city office. Is it a matter for surprise +that the young woman who is +accustomed gaily to remark, “Only five +minutes late this morning, father,” or +“I quite forgot to order the coals, dear,” +confident that a frown or a hard word +will end the affair, should carry into +business (be it never so grave) the laxities +so long permitted her in the home?</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>This I know and affirm, that the average +woman-journalist is the most loyal, +earnest, and teachable person under the +sun. I begin to feel sentimental when +I think of her astounding earnestness, +even in grasping the live coal of English +syntax. Syntax, bane of writing-women, +I have spent scores of ineffectual +hours in trying to inoculate the +ungrammatical sex against your terrors!</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>I have never refused work when the pay +has been good.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There is no logical answer to a guffaw.</p> +</div></div> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<span class="pagenum2" id="Page_99">[99]</span> + +<h2 class="nobreak"><i>October</i></h2> +</div> + +<div class="hangingindent"> + +<h3><i>One</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>A most curious and useful thing to realise +is that one never knows the impression +one is creating on other people.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>At seventy men begin to be separated +from their fellow-creatures. At eighty +they are like islets sticking out of a sea. +At eighty-five, with their trembling and +deliberate speech, they are the abstract +voice of human wisdom. They gather +wisdom with amazing rapidity in the +latter years, and even their folly is wise +then.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>In its essence all fiction is wildly improbable, +and its fundamental improbability +is masked by an observance of +probability in details.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Only reviewers have a prejudice against +long novels.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The most important of all perceptions is +the continual perception of cause and +effect—in other words, the perception +of the continuous development of the +universe—in still other words, the perception +of the course of evolution.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>No 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).</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The beauty of a classic is not at all apt +to knock you down. It will steal over +you, rather.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Self-respect is at the root of all purposefulness, +and a failure in an enterprise +deliberately planned deals a desperate +wound at one’s self-respect.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>A man may be a sub-editor, or even an +assistant-editor, for half a lifetime, and +yet remain ignorant of the true significance +of journalism.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Ten</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Happiness does not spring from the procuring +of physical or mental pleasure, +but from the development of reason and +the adjustment of conduct to principles.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eleven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The heart is convinced that custom is a +virtue. The heart of the dirty working-man +rebels when the State insists that +he shall be clean, for no other reason +than that it is his custom to be dirty.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twelve</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>To be honest with oneself is not so simple +as it appears.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“My wife will never understand,” said +Mr. Brindley, “that complete confidence +between two human beings is +impossible.”</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fourteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Demanding honesty from your authors, +you must see that you render it yourself.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fifteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Imagine the technical difficulties of a painter +whose canvas was always being rolled +off one stick on to another stick, and +who was compelled to do his picture +inch by inch, seeing nothing but the +particular inch which happened to be +under his brush. That difficulty is only +one of the difficulties of the novelist.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Sixteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is a fact that few novelists enjoy the +creative labour, though most enjoy thinking +about the creative labour. Novelists +enjoy writing novels no more than +ploughmen enjoy following the plough. +They regard business as a “grind.”</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seventeen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The born journalist comes into the world +with the fixed notion that nothing under +the sun is uninteresting. He says: “I +cannot pass along the street, or cut a +finger, or marry, or catch a cold or a +fish, or go to church, or perform any act +whatever, without being impressed anew +by the interestingness of mundane phenomena, +and without experiencing a desire +to share this impression with my +fellow-creatures.”</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eighteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Any change, even a change for the better, +is always accompanied by drawbacks +and discomforts.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Nineteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is much easier to begin a novel than +to finish it. This statement applies to +many enterprises, but to none with more +force than to a long art-work such as a +novel or a play.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>A true book is not always great. But a +great book is never untrue.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The impossible had occurred. I was no +longer a mere journalist; I was an +author. “After all, it’s nothing,” I said, +with that intense and unoriginal humanity +which distinguishes all of us. And +in a blinding flash I saw that an author +was in essence the same thing as a grocer +or a duke.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>When the reason and the heart come into +conflict the heart is invariably wrong.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Marriage is excessively prosaic and eternal, +not at all what you expect it to be.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>I do not forget that the realism of one +age is the conventionality of the next. +In the main the tendency of art is always +to reduce and simplify its conventions, +thus necessitating an increase +of virtuosity in order to obtain the same +effects of shapeliness and rhythm.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>For the majority of people the earth is +a dull planet. It is only a Stevenson +who can say: “I never remember being +bored,” and one may fairly doubt +whether even Stevenson uttered truth +when he made that extraordinary statement. +None of us escapes boredom entirely; +some of us, indeed, are bored +during the greater part of our lives. The +fact is unpalatable, but it is a fact.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>An average of over an hour a day given +to the mind should permanently and +completely enliven the whole activity +of the mind.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>A large class of people positively resent +being thrilled by a work of fiction, and +the domestic serial is meant to appeal to +this class.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is natural that people who concern +themselves with art only in their leisure +moments, demanding from it nothing +but a temporary distraction, should prefer +the obvious to the recondite, and +should walk regardless of beauty unless +it forces itself upon their attention by +means of exaggerations and advertisement. +The public wants to be struck, +hit squarely in the face; then it will +take notice.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>When a book attains a large circulation +one usually says that it succeeds. But +the fine books succeed of themselves, by +their own virtue, and apart from the +acclamatory noises of fame. Immure +them in cabinets, cast them into Sahara; +still they imperturbably succeed. If, on +a rare occasion, such a book sells by +scores of thousands, it is not the book +but the public which succeeds; it is not +the book but the public which has +emerged splendidly from a trial.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The artists who have courage fully to +exploit their own temperaments are always +sufficiently infrequent to be peculiarly +noticeable and welcome. Still more +rare are they who, leaving it to others +to sing and emphasise the ideal and +obvious beauties which all can in +some measure see, will exclusively exercise +the artist’s prerogative as an explorer +of hidden and recondite beauty +in unsuspected places.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Thirty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Bad books, by flattering you, by caressing, +by appealing to the weak or the base +in you, will often persuade you what fine +and splendid books they are.</p> +</div></div> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<span class="pagenum2" id="Page_109">[109]</span> + +<h2 class="nobreak"><i>November</i></h2> +</div> + +<div class="hangingindent"> + +<h3><i>One</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is well to remind ourselves that literature +is first and last a means of +life, and that the enterprise of forming +one’s literary taste is an enterprise of +learning how best to use this means of +life.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Instead of saying, “Sorry I can’t see +you, old chap, but I have to run off to +the tennis club,” you must say, “... But +I have to work.” This, I admit, is +intensely difficult to say. Tennis is so +much more urgent than the immortal +soul.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>A talent never persuades or encourages +the owner of it; it drives him with a +whip.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>One of the chief things which one 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.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Characterisation, the feat of individualising +characters, is the inmost mystery of +imaginative literary art. It is of the +very essence of the novel. It never belongs +to this passage or that. It is +implicit in the whole. It is always +being done, and is never finished till the +last page is written.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Can you deny that when you have something +definite to look forward to at +eventide, something that is to employ +all your energy, the thought of that +something gives a glow and a more +intense vitality to the whole day?</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Most good books have begun by causing +anger which disguised itself as contempt.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>When a thing is supreme there is nothing +to be said.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nine</i></h3> + +<h4><i>Ivan Sergeïtch Turgenev’s Birthday</i></h4> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The author of a miracle like <i>On the Eve</i> +may be born, but he is also made. In +the matter of condensation alone Turgenev +was unique among the great +literary artificers. He could say more +in a chapter of two thousand words than +any other novelist that ever lived. What +he accomplishes again and again in a +book of sixty thousand words, Tolstoi +could not have accomplished under a +quarter of a million.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Ten</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Fine taste in fiction is almost as rare +among novelists as among the general +public.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Eleven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>I have never once produced any literary +work without a preliminary incentive +quite other than the incentive of ebullient +imagination. I have never “wanted +to write,” until the extrinsic advantages +of writing had presented themselves to +me.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twelve</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Beauty is strangely various. There is the +beauty of light and joy and strength +exulting; but there is also the beauty +of shade, of sorrow and sadness, and of +humility oppressed. The spirit of the +sublime dwells not only in the high and +remote; it shines unperceived amid all +the usual meannesses of our daily +existence.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Always give your fellow creature credit +for good intentions. Do not you, though +sometimes mistakenly, always act for +the best? You know you do. And are +you alone among mortals in rectitude?</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Fourteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There is no such case as the average +case, just as there is no such man as +the average man. Every man and +every man’s case is special.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fifteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Outside the department of fiction there +are two kinds of authors—those who +want to write because they have something +definite to say, and those who +want something definite to say because +they can write.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Sixteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>A lover is one who deludes himself; a +journalist is one who deludes himself +and other people.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seventeen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Although a very greedy eater of literature, +I can only enjoy reading when I +have little time for reading. Give me +three hours of absolute leisure with +nothing to do but read, and I instantly +become almost incapable of the act.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Eighteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>I would point out that literature by no +means comprises the whole field of +knowledge, and that the disturbing thirst +to improve one’s self—to increase one’s +knowledge—may well be slaked quite +apart from literature.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nineteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The public, by its casual approval, may +give notoriety and a vogue which passes, +but it is incapable of the sustained ardour +of appreciation which alone results +in authentic renown. It is incapable +because it is nonchalant. To the public +art is a very little thing—a distraction, +the last resort against <i>ennui</i>. To the +critics art looms enormous. They do +not merely possess views; they are +possessed by them. Their views amount +to a creed, and that creed must be spread. +Quiescence is torment to the devotee. +He cannot cry peace when there is no +peace. Passionate conviction, like murder, +will out. “I believe; therefore you +must believe”: that is the motto which +moves the world.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Only those who have lived at the full +stretch seven days a week for a long +time can appreciate the full beauty of a +regularly recurring idleness.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Publishers as a commercial class are neither +more nor less honourable than any +other commercial class, and authors +are neither more nor less honourable +than publishers. In the world of commerce +one fights for one’s own hand and +keeps within the law; the code is universally +understood, and the man who +thinks it ought to be altered because <i>he</i> +happens to be inexperienced, is a fool.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There can be no sort of doubt that unless +I was prepared to flout the wisdom of +the ages, I ought to have refused his +suggestion. But is not the wisdom of +the ages a medicine for majorities? And, +indeed, I was prepared to flout it, as in +our highest and our lowest moments we +often are.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>London is chiefly populated by greyhaired +men who for twenty years have been +about to become journalists and authors. +And but for a fortunate incident—the +thumb of my Fate has always been +turned up—I might ere this have +fallen back into that tragic rearguard +of Irresolutes.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>I think it is rather fine, this necessity +for the tense bracing of the will before +anything worth doing can be done. I +rather like it myself. I feel it to be the +chief thing that differentiates me from +the cat by the fire.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>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 twenty-four hours, +is the calm realisation of the extreme +difficulty of the task, of the sacrifices +and the endless effort it demands.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Whatever sin a man does he either does +for his own benefit or for the benefit +of society.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The critic’s first requisite is that he +should be interested. A man may have +an instinctive good taste, but if his +attitude is one of apathy, then he is not +a true critic. The opinions of the public +are often wrong; the opinions of the +critic are usually right. But the fundamental +difference between these two +bodies does not lie here; it lies in the +fact that the critics “care,” while the +public does not care.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>When, after the theatre, a woman precedes +a man into a carriage, does she +not publish and glory in the fact that she +is his? Is it not the most delicious of +avowals? There is something in the +enforced bend of one’s head as one steps +in. And when the man shuts the door +with a masculine snap——</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Ardour in well-doing is a misleading and +a treacherous thing. It cries out loudly +for employment; you can’t satisfy it at +first; it wants more and more; it is +eager to move mountains and divert the +course of rivers; it isn’t content till it +perspires. And then, too often, when +it feels the perspiration on its brow, it +wearies all of a sudden and dies, without +even putting itself to the trouble of +saying, “I’ve had enough of this.”</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Literature exists so that where one man +has lived finely ten thousand may afterwards +live finely.</p> +</div></div> + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<span class="pagenum2" id="Page_119">[119]</span> + +<h2 class="nobreak"><i>December</i></h2> +</div> + +<div class="hangingindent"> + +<h3><i>One</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>To hear a master play a scale, to catch +that measured, tranquil succession of +notes, each a different jewel of equal +splendour, each dying precisely when the +next was born—this is to perceive at +last what music is made of, to have +glimpses of the divine magic that is the +soul of the divinest art.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>When the swimmer unclothes, and abandons +himself to the water, naked, letting +the water caress the whole of his +nakedness, moving his limbs in voluptuous +ease untrammelled by even the +lightest garment, then, as never under +other conditions, he is aware of his body; +and perhaps the thought occurs to him +that to live otherwise than in that +naked freedom is not to live.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Has it never struck you that you have +at hand a machine wonderful beyond all +mechanisms in sheds, intricate, delicately +adjustable, of astounding and miraculous +possibilities, interminably interesting? +That machine is yourself.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The sound reputation of an artist is +originally due never to the public, but +to the critics. I do not use the word +“critic” in a limited, journalistic sense; +it is meant to include all those persons, +whether scribes or not, who have genuine +convictions about art.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The movement for opening museums on +Sundays is the most natural movement +that could be conceived. For if +ever a resort was invented and fore-ordained +to chime with the true spirit +of the British Sabbath, that resort is the +average museum.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The manufacture of musical comedy is +interesting and curious, but I am not +aware that it has anything to do with +dramatic art.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Though you have the wealth of a cloak-room +attendant at the Carlton Hotel, +you cannot buy yourself a minute more +time than I have, or the cat by the fire +has.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The man of business, even in the very +daily act of deceit, will never yield up the +conviction that, after all, at bottom he is +crystal honest. It is his darling delusion.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Happiness is not joy, and it is not tranquillity. +It is something deeper and +something more disturbing. Perhaps it +is an acute sense of life, a realisation of +one’s secret being, a continual renewal +of the mysterious savour of existence.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Ten</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Our best plays, as works of art, are +strikingly inferior to our best novels. +A large section of the educated public +ignores the modern English theatre as +being unworthy of attention.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eleven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Romance, interest, dwell not in the thing +seen, but in the eye of the beholder.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twelve</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Every bookish person has indulgently observed +the artless absorption and surrender +with which a “man of action” +reads when by chance a book captures +him, his temporary monomania, his insistence +that the bookish person shall share +his joy, and his impatience at any exhibition +of indifference. For the moment +the terrible man of action is a child +again; he who has straddled the world +is like a provincial walking with open-mouthed +delight through the streets +of the capital.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Thirteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The woman who quarrels with a maid is +clumsy, and the woman who quarrels +with a good maid is either a fool or in a +nervous, hysterical condition, or both.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fourteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Men have a habit of taking themselves +for granted, and that habit is responsible +for nine-tenths of the boredom and +despair on the face of the planet.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Fifteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Anyone can learn to write, and to write +well, in any given style; but to see, +to discern the interestingness which is +veiled from the crowd—that comes not +by tuition; rather by intuition.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Sixteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The forms of faith change, but the spirit +of faith is immortal amid its endless +vicissitudes.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Seventeen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Consider the attitude of Dissenters of the +trading and industrial classes towards +the art of literature.... That attitude +is at once timid, antagonistic, and resentful. +Timid, because print still has +for the unlettered a mysterious sanction; +antagonistic because Puritanism and the +arts have by no means yet settled their +quarrel; resentful because the autocratic +power of art over the imagination +and the intelligence is felt without being +understood.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Eighteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is said that men are only interested in +themselves. The truth is that, as a rule, +men are interested in every mortal thing +except themselves.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Nineteen</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It is less difficult, I should say, to succeed +moderately in journalism than to succeed +moderately in dressmaking.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Music cannot be said. One art cannot be +translated into another.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>A deep-seated objection to the intrusion +of even the most loved male at certain +times is common, I think, to all women. +Women are capable of putting love +aside, like a rich dress, and donning the +<i>peignoir</i> of matter-of-fact dailiness, in a +way which is an eternal enigma to men.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-two</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>There’s nothing like a corpse for putting +everything at sixes and sevens.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-three</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Great grief is democratic, levelling—not +downwards but upwards. It strips +away the inessential and makes brothers. +It is impatient with all the unavailable +inventions which obscure the brotherhood +of mankind.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-four</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The expression of the soul by means of +the brain and body is what we call the +art of “living.”</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-five</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>That Christmas has lost some of its +magic is a fact that the common-sense +of the western hemisphere will not dispute. +To blink the fact is infantile. +To confront it, to try to understand it, +to reckon with it, and to obviate any +evil that may attach to it—this course +alone is meet for an honest man.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-six</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>It must be admitted in favour of the +Five Towns that, when its inhabitants +spill milk, they do not usually sit down +on the pavement and adulterate the +milk with their tears. They pass on. +Such passing on is termed callous and +coldhearted in the rest of England, +which loves to sit down on pavements +and weep into irretrievable milk.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-seven</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>At thirty the chances are that a man +will understand better the draughts of a +chimney than his own respiratory apparatus—to +name one of the simple, +obvious things; and as for understanding +the working of his own brain—what an +idea!</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-eight</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Science is making it increasingly difficult +to conceive matter apart from spirit. +Everything lives. Even my razor gets +“tired.”</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Twenty-nine</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>No book in any noble library is so interesting, +so revealing, as the catalogue +of it.</p> +</div> + + +<h3><i>Thirty</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>Love is the greatest thing in life; one +may, however, question whether it +should be counted greater than life +itself.</p> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span></p> + + +<h3><i>Thirty-one</i></h3> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>The indispensable preparation for brain-discipline +is to form the habit of regarding +one’s brain as an instrument exterior +to one’s self, like a tongue or a foot.</p> +</div></div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" /> + + +<div class="chapter"> +<div class="transnote"> +<p class="ph1">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:</p> + +<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.</p> +</div></div> +<div style='margin-top:1.5em;margin-bottom:1em;'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG BOOK OF THE ARNOLD BENNETT CALENDAR ***</div> + +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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