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You can only acquire really useful general ideas by first acquiring particular ideas . . . You cannot make bricks without straw.

Arnold Bennett

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Arnold Bennett
Age: 63 †
Born: 1867
Born: May 27
Died: 1931
Died: March 27
Autobiographer
Diarist
Film Writer
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Mother Town
Enoch Arnold Bennett
First
Acquire
Really
Useful
Make
General
Particular
Cannot
Straw
Ideas
Straws
Firsts
Acquiring
Without
Bricks

More quotes by Arnold Bennett

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The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained it. And they have attained it by realizing that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.
Arnold Bennett
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The manner in which one single ray of light, one single precious hint, will clarify and energize the whole mental life of him who receives it, is among the most wonderful and heavenly of intellectual phenomena.
Arnold Bennett
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Great wealth may be to its owner a blessing or a curse. Alas! I fear it is too often the latter. It hardens the heart, blunts the finer susceptibilities, and transforms into a fiend what under more favourable circumstances might have been a human being.
Arnold Bennett
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Prepare to live by all means, but for Heaven's sake do not forget to live.
Arnold Bennett
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Worry is evidence of an ill-controlled brain it is merely a stupid waste of time in unpleasantness.
Arnold Bennett
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Only a very gifted mind could cope singly with all the problems which present themselves in the perfecting of a home.
Arnold Bennett
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The test of a first-rate work, and a test of your sincerity in calling it a first-rate work, is that you finish it.
Arnold Bennett
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In search of ideas I spent yesterday morning in walking about, and went to the stores and bought things in four departments. A wonderful and delightful way of spending time. I think this sort of activity does stimulate creative ideas.
Arnold Bennett
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I do want an expensive honeymoon. Not because I'm extravagant, but because a honeymoon is a solemn, important thing ... a symbol. And it ought to be done -- well, adequately.
Arnold Bennett
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It is difficult to make a reputation, but is even more difficult seriously to mar a reputation once properly made --- so faithful is the public.
Arnold Bennett
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I ought to reflect again and again, and yet again, that the beings that I have to steer are just as inevitable in the scheme of evolution as I am myself have just as much right to be themselves as I am entitled to and they all deserve from me as much sympathy as I give to myself.
Arnold Bennett
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Far from the madding crowd is a mistake on a honeymoon.... Solitude! Wherever you are, if you're on a honeymoon, you'll get quite as much solitude as is good for you every twenty-four hours. Constant change and distraction -- that's what wants arranging for. Solitude will arrange itself.
Arnold Bennett
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You are not in charge of the universe you are in charge of yourself.
Arnold Bennett
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If you've ever really been poor you remain poor at heart all your life. I've often walked when I could very well afford to take a taxi because I simply couldn't bring myself to waste the shilling it would cost.
Arnold Bennett
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The people who live in the past must yield to the people who live in the future. Otherwise the world would begin to turn the other way round.
Arnold Bennett
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Time is the explicable raw material of everything.
Arnold Bennett
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We shall never have more time. We have, and always had, all the time there is. No object is served in waiting until next week or even until tomorrow. Keep going... Concentrate on something useful.
Arnold Bennett
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Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.
Arnold Bennett
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The makers of literature are those who have seen and felt the miraculous interestingness of the universe. If you have formed...literary taste...your life will be one long ecstasy of denying that the world is a dull place.
Arnold Bennett
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The chief beauty about time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your life. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.
Arnold Bennett