George Gissing

“I don't advise. You mutn't give any weight to what I say, except in so far as your own judgment approves it.”

“He liked to feel the soft little hand clasping his own fingers, so big and coarse in comparison, and happily so strong. For in the child's weakness he felt an infinite pathos; a being so entirely helpless, so utterly dependent upon others' love, standing there amid a world of cruelties, smiling and trustful.”

“—Amy said that would be an imprudent expense; but as soon as he had got a good price for a book. Will not the publishers be kind? If they knew what happiness lurked in embryo within their foolish cheque-books!”

“Well, I wasn't going to abuse him. I was only going to ask: Is there any quality which distinguishes his work from that of twenty struggling writers one could name? Of course not. He's a clever, prolific man; so are they. But he began with money and friends; he came from Oxford into the thick of advertised people; his name was mentioned in print six times a week before he had written a dozen articles. This kind of thing will become the rule. Men won't succeed in literature that they may get into society, but will get into society that they may succeed in literature.”

“He inspired no distrust; his good nature seemed all-pervading; he had the air of one who lavishes disinterested counsel, and ever so little exalts himself with his facile exuberance of speech. The Whirlpool”

“Life is a huge farce, and the advantage of possessing a sense of humour is that it enables one to defy fate with mocking laughter.”

“Money is made at Christmas out of holly and mistletoe, but who save the vendors would greatly care if no green branch were procurable? One symbol, indeed, has obscured all others--the minted round of metal. And one may safely say that, of all the ages since a coin first became the symbol of power, ours is that in which it yields to the majority of its possessors the poorest return in heart's contentment.”

“That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be generous.”

“Money is time. With money I buy for cheerful use the hours which otherwise would not in any sense be mine; nay, which would make me their miserable bondsman.”

“It is familiarity with life that makes time speed quickly. When every day is a step in the unknown, as for children, the days are long with gathering of experience . . .”

“Life, I fancy, would very often be insupportable, but for the luxury of self-compassion.”

“Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice.”

“Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event.”

“Honest Winter, snow-clad, and with the frosted beard, I can welcome not uncordially; But that long deferment of the calendar's promise, that weeping gloom of March and April, that bitter blast outraging the honour of May how often has it robbed me of heart and hope?”

“It is the mind which creates the world around us, and even though we stand side by side in the same meadow, my eyes will never see what is beheld by yours, my heart will never stir to the emotions with which yours is touched.”

“I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.”

“How I envy those clerks who go by to their offices in the morning! There's the day's work cut out for them; no question of mood and feeling; they have just to work at something, and when the evening comes, they have earned their wages, and they are free to rest and enjoy themselves. What an insane thing it is to make literature one's only means of support! When the most trivial accident may at any time prove fatal to one's power of work for weeks or months. No, that is the unpardonable sin! To make a trade of an art! I am rightly served for attempting such a brutal folly.”

“And why should any man who writes, even if he writes things immortal, nurse anger at the world's neglect? Who asked him to publish? Who promised him a hearing? Who has broken faith with him? Your poem, your novel, who bargained with you for it?”

“The result will be something unutterably tedious.”

“The misery of having no time to read a thousand glorious books.”