George Gissing Quotes

Part I: Miss. Lord CHAPTER 1 At eight o'clock on Sunday morning, Arthur Peachey unlocked his front door, and quietly went forth. He had not ventured to ask that early breakfast should be prepared for him. Enough that he was leaving home for a summer holiday — the first he had allowed himself since his marriage three years ago.

I maintain that we people of brains are justified in supplying the mob with the food it likes.

All the pedantry of her daily toil slipped away like a cumbrous garment; she was clad only in her womanhood.

We have bidden the world go round for our amusement; henceforth it is our occupation to observe and discuss and make merry.

Let beauty perish if it cannot ally itself with mind.

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

She read a good deal of that kind of literature which may be defined as specialism popularised; writing which addresses itself to educated, but not strictly studious, persons, and which forms the reservoir of conversation for society above the sphere of turf and west-endism. Thus, for instance, though she could not undertake the volumes of Herbert Spencer, she was intelligently acquainted with the tenor of their contents; and though she had never opened one of Darwin’s books, her knowledge of his main theories and illustrations was respectable. She was becoming a typical woman of the new time, the woman who has developed concurrently with journalistic enterprise.

Lyddy,’ she added in a whisper, ‘it makes you so cruel to other people when you love anyone.

A few days ago her startled eye had caught an advertisement in the newspaper, headed 'Literary Machine'; had it then been invented at last, some automaton to supply the place of such poor creatures as herself to turn out books and articles? Alas! the machine was only one for holding volumes conveniently, that the work of literary manufacture might be physically lightened. But surely before long some Edison would make the true automaton; the problem must be comparatively such a simple one. Only to throw in a given number of old books, and have them reduced, blended, modernised into a single one for to-day's consumption.

We all know perfectly well that happiness is the conscious exertion of individual powers

What is his line?’
‘Ah, that’s the question! Very likely he hasn’t one at all. It seems to me there’s a good many young fellows in that case nowadays. They have education, they have money, and they don’t know what the deuce to do with either one or the other. They’re a cut above you, Mr. Jack; it isn’t enough for them to live and enjoy themselves. So they get it into their heads that they’re called upon to reform the world — a nice handy little job, that’ll keep them going. The girls, I notice, are beginning to have the same craze. I shouldn’t wonder if Paula gets an idea that she’ll be a hospital-nurse, or go district-visiting in Bethnal Green.

The art of living is the art of compromise.

And remember, to admit that the multitude are fools is not the same thing as to deny the possibility of progress.

And there followed the antiphony of ardour that finds its first utterance — a subdued music, often interrupted, ever returning upon the same rich note.

Never had it occurred to Widdowson that a wife remains an individual, with rights and obligations independent of their wifely condition.