George Gissing Quotes

Heart-break is a very old-fashioned disorder, associated with poverty of the brain.

To stab the root of a young tree, to hang crushing burdens upon it, to rend off its early branches — that is not the treatment likely to result in growth such as nature purposed. There will come of it a vicious formation, and the principle applies also to the youth of men.

Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice, was a characterising note of Mr Fadge’s periodical; his

Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice.

Now he was indifferent to all "questions" save that prime solicitude of the human race, how to hold its own against the hostile forces everywhere leagued against it. Life was a perpetual struggle, and, let dreamers say what they might, could never be anything else; he, for one, perceived no right that he had to claim exemption from the doom of labour. Had he felt an impulse to any other kind of work, well and good, he would have turned to it; but nothing whatever called to him with imperative voice save this task of tilling his own acres. It might not always satisfy him; he took no vow of one sole vocation; he had no desire to let his mind rust whilst his hands grew horny. Enough that for the present he had an aim which he saw as a reality.

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

A man who comes to be hanged,' pursued Jasper, impartially, 'has the satisfaction of knowing that he has brought society to its last resource. He is a man of such fatal importance that nothing will serve against him but the supreme effort of law. In a way, you know, that is success.' 'In

"We are told," said Irene, "that England must expand."
"Probably. But the mere necessity of the case must not become our law. It won't do for a great people to say, 'Make room for us, and we promise to set you a fine example of civilisation; refuse to make room, and we'll blow your brains out!' One doubts the quality of the civilisation promised."

That poor creature’s unhappiness was doubtless in great measure due to the conviction that in missing love and marriage she had missed everything.

Isn’t it a most ridiculous thing that married people who both wish to separate can’t do so and be quite free again?

His religion is not an end in itself; he does not desire to be thought a saint; his prayers are inseparable from the chamber-candlestick, a mere item in the character of British respectability.

A powerful intellect by no means implies a corresponding development of the moral sense.

"I see. I imagined that he was cast out of all decent society".
"If society were really decent, he would have been"

Yet in Peak's case all appearances are against him — just because he is of low birth, has no means, and wants desperately to get into society. The fellow is a scoundrel; I am convinced of it. Yet his designs may be innocent.

What I hoped was to raise up for the poor and the untaught a friend out of their own midst, some one who had gone through all that they suffer, who was accustomed to earn her own living by the work of her hands as they do, who had never thought herself their better, who saw the world as they see it and knew all their wants. A lady may do good, we know that; but she can’t be the friend of the poor as I understand it; there’s too great a distance between her world and theirs.