George Gissing Quotes

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. ~ George Gissing

I am much better employed from every point of view, when I live solely for my own satisfaction, than when I begin to worry about the world. The world frightens me, and a frightened man is no good for anything. ~ George Gissing

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. ~ George Gissing

That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be
generous. ~ George Gissing

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. ~ George Gissing

Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event. ~ George Gissing

But just understand the difference between a man like Reardon and a man like me. He is the old type of unpractical artist; I am the literary man of 1882. He won't make concessions, or rather, he can't make them; he can't supply the market. I
well, you may say that at present, I do nothing; but that's a great mistake, I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets; when one kind of goods begins to go off slackly, he is ready with something new and appetising. He knows perfectly all the possible sources of income. Whatever he has to sell, he'll get payment for it from all sorts of various quarters; none of your unpractical selling for a lump sum to a middleman who will make six distinct profits. ~ George Gissing

For one thing, I know every book of mine by its scent. ~ George Gissing

Have the courage of your desire. ~ George Gissing

If Gissing is less compassionately observant than Mrs Gaskell, less overtly polemical than Kingsley, still The Nether World and Demos would be sympathetically endorsed by either of them, or by their typical readers. Yet Gissing does introduce an important new element, and one that remains significant. He has often been called 'the spokesman of despair,' and this is true in both meanings of the phrase. Like Kingsley and Mrs Gaskell, he writes to describe the true conditions of the poor, and to protest against those brute forces of society which fill with wreck the abysses of the nether world. Yet he is also the spokesman of another kind of despair: the despair born of social and political disillusion. In this he is a figure exactly like Orwell in our own day, and for much the same reason. Whether one calls this honesty or not will depend on experience. ~ Raymond Williams

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

A womanly occupation means, practically, an occupation that a man disdains. ~ George Gissing

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? ~ George Gissing

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

Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice. ~ George Gissing

Confound it! It's just because nobody does anything that things have come to this pass! ~ George Gissing

Nowhere is the English genius of domesticity more notably evident than in the festival of afternoon tea. The [ ... ] chink of cups and the saucers tunes the mind to happy repose. ~ George Gissing

A pipe for the hour of work; a cigarette for the hour of conception; a cigar for the hour of vacuity. ~ George Gissing

Human creatures have a mervellous power of adapting themselves to necessity. ~ 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. ~ George Gissing

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 ... ~ George Gissing

The result will be something unutterably tedious. ~ George Gissing

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. ~ George Gissing

Parks are but pavement disguised with a growth of grass. ~ George Gissing

To like Keats is a test of fitness for understanding poetry, just as to like Shakespeare is a test of general mental capacity. ~ George Gissing

I wish girls fell down and died of hunger in the streets, instead of creeping to their garrets and the hospitals. I should like to see their dead bodies collected together in some open place for the crowd to stare at.'
Monica gazed at her with wide eyes.
'You mean, I suppose, that people would try to reform things.'
'Who knows? Perhaps they might only congratulate each other that a few of the superfluous females had been struck off. ~ George Gissing

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. ~ George Gissing

But the loneliness of her life had developed in her a sensitiveness which could not endure situations such as the present; difficulties which are of small account to people who take their part in active social life, harassed her to the destruction of all peace. ~ George Gissing

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. ~ George Gissing

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. ~ George Gissing

I hate and fear 'science' because of my conviction that, for long to come if not for ever, it will be the remorseless enemy of mankind. I see it destroying all simplicity and gentleness of life, all the beauty of the world; I see it restoring barbarism under a mask of civilization; I see it darkening men's minds and hardening their hearts. ~ George Gissing

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. ~ George Gissing

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. ~ George Gissing

I have the happiness of a passing moment, and what more can mortal ask? ~ George Gissing

There should be no such thing as a class of females vulgarized by the necessity of finding daily amusement. ~ George Gissing

One of the shining moments of my day is that when, having returned a little weary from an afternoon walk, I exchange boots for slippers, out-of-doors coat for easy, familiar, shabby jacket, and, in my deep, soft-elbowed chair, await the tea-tray ... [H]ow delicious is the soft yet penetrating odour which floats into my study, with the appearance of the teapot! ... What a glow does it bring after a walk in chilly rain! ~ George Gissing

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. ~ George Gissing

Lonely and isolated people who feel their solitude more intensely within the busy life of the streets. They are what George Gissing called the anchorites of daily life, who return unhappy to their solitary rooms. ~ Peter Ackroyd

- 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! ~ George Gissing

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. ~ George Gissing

Literature nowadays is a trade ... the successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets. ~ George Gissing

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 ~ George Gissing

To the relatively poor (who are so much worse off than the poor absolutely) education is in most cases a mocking cruelty. ~ George Gissing

Old places and old persons in their turn, when spirit dwells in them, have an intrinsic vitality of which youth is incapable, precisely, the balance and wisdom that come from long perspectives and broad foundations ~ George Santayana

There's never a garden in all the parish but what there's endless waste in it for want o' somebody as could use everything up. It's what I think to myself sometimes, as there need nobody run short o' victuals if the land was made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what could find it's way to a mouth. ~ George Eliot

A child, more than all other gifts That earth can offer to declining man, Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts. - WORDSWORTH. ~ George Eliot

I crawled back to bed, knowing I was done for. Hours later, the phone in our room started ringing. It was George. He was not happy.
"Room 312. Now!" he shouted.
Bouldy got up. I tried to pull myself together, splashing my face with water and hauling on my shorts and flip flops. It was a lovely day outside, the sun was scorching hot and there wasn't a cloud in the sky, but it might as well have been a pissing wet morning in St Albans for all I cared. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach as we made the Walk of Death to Room 312, which I knew was Paul and Gus's room.
When we walked in, I thought I'd arrived in downtown Baghdad. Water dripped from the ceiling. The board games were in pieces and all the plastic parts were scattered over the floor. The balcony window was wide open and I could see a bed upended by the pool outside. ~ Paul Merson

Le Carre's voice - patrician, cold, brilliant and amused - was perfect for the wilderness-of-mirrors undertow of the Cold War, and George Smiley is the all-time harassed bureaucrat of spy fiction. ~ Alan Furst

I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when the British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. ~ George Galloway

The watcher on the walls. The sword in the darkness. ~ George R R Martin

Our capitol punishment system is haunted by the demon of error- error in determining guilt, error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die ... The legislation couldn't reform it. Lawmakers won't repeal it. I won't stand for it. I had to act ... I am commuting the sentences of all death row inmates. ~ George Ryan

You know something I could really do without? The Space Shuttle ... It's irresponsible. The last thing we should be doing is sending our grotesquely distorted DNA out into space. ~ George Carlin

Egg has the truth of it. Aerion's quite the monster. He thinks he's a dragon in human form, you know. That's why he was so wroth at that puppet show. A pity he wasn't born a Fossoway, then he'd think himself an apple and we'd all be a deal safer, but there you are. ~ George R R Martin

Music is the brandy of the damned. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Nearly all monster stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant, Beowulf or St. George slaying the Dragon, Harry Potter triumphing over the basilisk. That is their inner grammar, and the whole shape of the story leads towards it. ~ A. N. Wilson

Beyond the Wall the monsters live, the giants and the ghouls, the stalking shadows and the dead that walk, but they cannot pass so long as the Wall stands strong and the men of the Night's Watch are true. So go to sleep Brandon, my baby boy, and dream sweet dreams. There are no monsters here. ~ George R R Martin

One very important aspect of our contemporary musical culture - some might say the supremely important aspect - is its extension in the historical and geographical senses to a degree unknown in the past. ~ George Crumb

Prisoner of War guard companies, or an equivalent organization, should be as far forward as possible in action to take over prisoners of war, because troops heated with battle are not safe custodians. Any attempt to rob or loot prisoners of war by escorts must be dealt strictly with. ~ George S. Patton

Some men are born to be killed. ~ George R R Martin

Within any important issue, there are always aspects no one wishes to discuss. ~ George Orwell

I've always said that if I could have made a living someway in gospel music, I would have loved to had that break, but it never was offered to me, a job in that field, so naturally, I got lost on that other road. ~ George Jones

The night is dark and filled with terrors, ~ George R R Martin

In a paradise with sweet laughs for bird-notes, and blue eyes for a heaven. ~ George Eliot

Let death do what it can, there is just one thing it cannot destroy, and that is life. Never in itself, only in the unfaith of man, does life recognize any sway of death. ~ George MacDonald

Against every great and noble endeavor stand a thousand mediocre minds. ~ George S. Robinson

The president I came to know best was George Herbert Walker Bush. No. 41 in your program, No. 1 on your list of fast-playing golfers. ~ Dan Jenkins

It is infinitely better to have a few good men than many indifferent ones. ~ George Washington

Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a Country. As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities. ~ George Mason

The American people are proud to welcome your majesty back to the United States, a nation you've come to know very well. After all you've dined with 10 U.S. presidents. You've helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 -in 1976 ~ George W. Bush

And be nice," [...] "Or you won't be my monster of honor."
"Your Best Bitch?" she asked in a reverent whisper.
"Right up there at my side," George said, "reminding me I don't deserve him. ~ Christina Lauren

If the American people knew what we have done, they would string us up from the lamp posts. ~ George H. W. Bush

Popular culture bombards us with examples of animals being humanized for all sorts of purposes, ranging from education to entertainment to satire to propaganda. Walt Disney, for example, made us forget that Mickey is a mouse, and Donald a duck. George Orwell laid a cover of human societal ills over a population of livestock. ~ Frans De Waal

All dwarfs may be bastards yet not all bastards are dwarfs. ~ George R R Martin

I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him 'father.' ~ Will Rogers

Morality is not respectability. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I do not believe there is such a thing as a God. ~ George Holyoake