George Gissing > Quotes

“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

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

“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

“Poverty makes a crime of every indulgence.”
― George Gissing, The Nether World

“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

“A womanly occupation means, practically, an occupation that a man disdains.”
― George Gissing, The Odd Women

“Life, I fancy, would very often be insupportable, but for the luxury of self-compassion.”
― George Gissing

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

“Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice.”
― 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

“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 R. Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

“For the man sound in body and serene in 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

“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, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

“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

“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

“And why should any man who writes, even if he writes things immortal, nurse anger at the world's neglect? Who asked him to publish? Who promised him a hearing? Who has broken faith with him? Your poem, your novel, who bargained with you for it?”
― 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 R. Gissing

“There should be no such thing as a class of females vulgarized by the necessity of finding daily amusement.”
― George Gissing, The Odd Women

“He liked to feel the soft little hand clasping his own fingers, so big and coarse in comparison, and happily so strong. For in the child's weakness he felt an infinite pathos; a being so entirely helpless, so utterly dependent upon others' love, standing there amid a world of cruelties, smiling and trustful.”
― 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, New Grub Street

“To the relatively poor (who are so much worse off than the poor absolutely) education is in most cases a mocking cruelty.”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“The result will be something unutterably tedious.”
― 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, The Odd Women

“. . . the love of a man and a woman who can think intelligently may be the best thing life has to offer them.”
― George Gissing, The Odd Women

“Let beauty perish if it cannot ally itself with mind.”
― George Gissing, The Odd Women

“But we have no money. Suffer as we may, there's no help for it—because we have no money. Lives may be wasted—worse, far worse than wasted—just because there is no money. At this moment a whole world of men and women is in pain and sorrow—because they have no money. How often have we said that? The world is made so; everything has to be bought with money.”
― George Gissing, The Nether World

“I don't think . . . there's much real difference between men and women. That is, there wouldn't be, if women had fair treatment.”
― George Gissing, The Odd Women

“Poverty will make the best people bad, if it gets hard enough. Why there’s so much of it in the world, I’m sure I can’t see.”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“She had dreamed her dream, and on awaking must be content to take up the day's duties. Just in the same way, when she was a child at Mrs. Peckover's, did not sleep often bring a vision of happiness, of freedom from bitter tasks, and had she not to wake in the miserable mornings, trembling lest she had lain too long? Her condition was greatly better than then, so much better that it seemed wicked folly to lament because one joy was not granted her.—”
― George Gissing, The Nether World