George Gissing Quotes
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For the man sound of body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every day has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously.
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To like Keats is a test of fitness for understanding poetry, just as to like Shakespeare is a test of general mental capacity.
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A pipe for the hour of work; a cigarette for the hour of conception; a cigar for the hour of vacuity.
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Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event.
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That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be generous.
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People have got that ancient prejudice so firmly rooted in their heads that one mustn't write save at I the dictation of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, writing is a business.
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Time is money says the proverb, but turn it around and you get a precious truth. Money is time.
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Have the courage of your desire.
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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.
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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.
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Perhaps it is while drinking tea that I most of all enjoy the sense of leisure.
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Money is made at Christmas out of holly and mistletoe, but who save the vendors would greatly care if no green branch were procurable?
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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.
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To be at other people's orders brings out all the bad in me.
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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?
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It is our duty never to speak ill of others, you know; least of all when we know that to do so will be the cause of much pain and trouble.
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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.
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I have the happiness of a passing moment, and what more can mortal ask?
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Parks are but pavement disguised with a growth of grass.
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The mind which renounces, once and for ever, a futile hope, has its compensation in ever-growing calm.
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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 loom of March and April, that bitter blast outraging the honor of May - how often has it robbed me of heart and hope.
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Literature nowadays is a trade... the successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets.
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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 . . .
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Human creatures have a mervellous power of adapting themselves to necessity.
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Life, I fancy, would very often be insupportable, but for the luxury of self compassion.
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Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice.
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For one thing, I know every book of mine by its scent.
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The truths of life are not discovered by us. At moments unforeseen, some gracious influence descends upon the soul, touching it to an emotion which, we know not how, the mind transmutes into thought.
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London is a huge shop, with a hotel on the upper storeys.
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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.
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