Arnold Bennett

Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 – 27 March 1931) was an English novelist and playwright.

Quotes

• Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.
  • The Journals of Arnold Bennett, ed. Newman Flower (pub. Cassell, 1932)

• The price of justice is eternal publicity.
  • Things That Have Interested Me, 2nd series (1923), "Secret Trials"

The Title (1918)

• A cause may be inconvenient, but it's magnificent. It's like champagne or high heels, and one must be prepared to suffer for it.
  • Act I

• Being a husband is a whole-time job. That is why so many husbands fail. They can't give their entire attention to it.
  • Act I

• Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.
  • Act II

How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day (1910)

• Yes books are valuable. But not reading of books will take the place of a daily, candid, honest examination of what one has recently done, and what one is about to do - of a steady looking at one's self in the face (disconcerting though the sight may be).
  • Chapter 8.

• A prig is a pompous fool who has gone out for a ceremonial walk, and without knowing it has lost an important part of his attire, namely, his sense of humour.
  • Chapter 12.

• And, having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense.
  • Chapter 12.

Quotes about Arnold Bennett

• These Twain is the story of a marriage. It was written out of experience and disappointment, and out of a kind of triumph. Marriage is appalling, says Bennett, but it is worth it. And he was well qualified to make the statement.
  • Margaret Drabble, Arnold Bennett: A Biography. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1974.  2011 edition. Faber & Faber, Ltd. ISBN 978-0571255092. 

• Success is often described as a damaging thing for a writer, not so much because money is the root of all evil, but because it cuts him away from the material which is his strength. Arnold Bennett is probably the very best example of that in literature. When he was writing about the Five Towns, he wrote magnificently because he wrote of what he knew in his veins, what is in his blood, his sinews. That is what he had known in his childhood and early years. When big success came, and he came up to London and he moved in a vivid and fashionable world, among very much more interesting people, very much more important people than he had known as a boy, he wrote nothing that was convincing; he described luxury yachts, smart hotels, and restaurants in the Riviera. His work became... it was like cut flowers; it had no roots in itself, and this particular problem is worrying the novelist all the time because he knows he’s not getting the right material for his books.
  • Alec Waugh, A Novelist on Novels. PSU Library Special Collections and University Archives Oregon Public Speakers Collection (March 7, 1960 Portland State College).