George Gissing Quotes

35 quotes in 642 categories

• 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,…
• In nothing more is the English genius for domesticity more notably declared than in the institution of this festival-almost one may call it-of afternoon tea...the…
• 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 loom…
• 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…
• Time is money says the proverb, but turn it around and you get a precious truth. Money is time.
• 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.
• 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…
• 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…
• To like Keats is a test of fitness for understanding poetry, just as to like Shakespeare is a test of general mental capacity.
• 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…
• For one thing, I know every book of mine by its scent.
• That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be generous.
• It is because nations tend towards stupidity and baseness that mankind moves so slowly; it is because individuals have a capacity for better things that…
• 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…
• 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,…
• Perhaps it is while drinking tea that I most of all enjoy the sense of leisure.
• Parks are but pavement disguised with a growth of grass.
• The mind which renounces, once and for ever, a futile hope, has its compensation in ever-growing calm.
• To every man it is decreed: Thou shalt live alone. Happy they who imagine that they have escaped the common lot; happy, whilst they imagine…
• Have the courage of your desire.

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