77 Quotes by George Gissing

"For one thing, I know every book of mine by its scent."

"Money is made at Christmas out of holly and mistletoe, but who save the vendors would greatly care if no green branch were procurable?"

"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?"

"I hate with a bitter hatred the names of lentils haricots – those pretentious cheats of the appetite, those tabulated humbugs, those certified aridites calling themselves human food!"

"The simple, sober truth has no chance whatever of being listened to, and it’s only by volume of shouting that the ear of the public is held. What."

"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 of March and April, that bitter blast outraging the honor of May – how often has it robbed me of heart and hope."

"Confound it! It’s just because nobody does anything that things have come to this pass!"

"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."

"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."

"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."