Chapter II: Part 2

I will be bold enough to say that quite seventy per cent. of ambition
is never realised at all, and that ninety per cent. of all realised
ambition is fruitless.

_Thirty_

To comply with the regulations ordained by English Society for the
conduct of successful painters, he ought, first, to have taken the
elementary precaution of being born in the United States. He ought,
after having refused all interviews for months, to have ultimately
granted a special one to a newspaper with the largest circulation. He
ought to have returned to England, grown a mane and a tufted tail,
and become the king of beasts; or at least to have made a speech at a
banquet about the noble and purifying mission of art. Assuredly, he
ought to have painted the portrait of his father or grandfather as an
artisan to prove that he was not a snob.

_Thirty-one_

Women enjoy a reputation for slipshod style. They have earned it.
A long and intimate familiarity with the manuscript of hundreds
of women-writers, renowned and otherwise, has convinced me that
not ten per cent. of them can be relied upon to satisfy even the
most ordinary tests in spelling, grammar, and punctuation. I do
not hesitate to say that if twenty of the most honoured and popular
women-writers were asked to sit for an examination in these simple
branches of learning, the general result (granted that a few might
emerge with credit) would not only startle themselves, but would
provide innocent amusement for the rest of mankind.

_August_

_One_

My theory is that if a really big concern is properly organized, the
boss ought to be absolutely independent of all routine. He ought to
be free for anything that turns up unexpectedly.

_Two_

Often I have felt that: “I know enough, I feel enough. If my future
is as long as my past, I shall still not be able to put down the
tenth part of what I have already acquired.”

_Three_

In journalism, as probably in no other profession, success depends
wholly upon the loyal co-operation, the perfect reliability, of a
number of people--some great, some small, but none irresponsible.

_Four_

The significance and the worth of literature are to be comprehended
and assessed in the same way as the significance and the worth of any
other phenomenon: by the exercise of common-sense.

_Five_

All wrong-doing is done in the sincere belief that it is the best
thing to do.

_Six_

There is always a mental inferior handy, just as there is always a
being more unhappy than we are.

_Seven_

Often have I said inwardly: “World, when I talk with you, dine with
you, wrangle with you, love you, and hate you, I condescend.” Every
artist has said that. People call it conceit; people may call it what
they please.

_Eight_

The artistic pleasures of an uncultivated mind are generally violent.

_Nine_

Literature cannot be said to have served its true purpose until it
has been translated into the actual life of him who reads.

_Ten_

When you cannot express yourself, depend upon it that you have
nothing precise to express.

_Eleven_

Monotony, solitude, are essential to the full activity of the artist.
Just as a horse is seen best when coursing alone over a great
plain, so the fierce and callous egotism of the artist comes to its
perfection in a vast expanse of custom, leisure, and apparently
vacuous reverie.

_Twelve_

There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than
he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says
nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

_Thirteen_

We can no more spend all our waking hours in consciously striving
towards higher things than we can dine exclusively off jam.

_Fourteen_

All spending is a matter of habit.

_Fifteen_

The views from Richmond Hill or Hindhead, or along Pall Mall
at sunset, the smell of the earth, the taste of fruit and of
kisses--these things are unaffected by the machinations of trusts and
the hysteria of stock exchanges.

_Sixteen_

If there is one point common to all classics, it is the absence of
exaggeration.

_Seventeen_

It is only people of small moral stature who have to stand on their
dignity.

_Eighteen_

When you live two and a half miles from a railway you can cut a dash
on an income which in London spells omnibus instead of cab. For
myself, I have a profound belief in the efficacy of cutting a dash.

_Nineteen_

No one can write correctly without deliberately and laboriously
learning how to write correctly. On the other hand, everyone can
learn to write correctly who takes sufficient trouble. Correct
writing is a mechanical accomplishment; it could be acquired by a
stockbroker.

_Twenty_

An understanding appreciation of literature means an understanding
appreciation of the world, and it means nothing else.

_Twenty-one_

Much ingenuity with a little money is vastly more profitable and
amusing than much money without ingenuity.

_Twenty-two_

Nothing is easier than to explain an accomplished fact in a nice,
agreeable, conventional way.

_Twenty-three_

Literature is the art of using words. This is not a platitude, but a
truth of the first importance, a truth so profound that many writers
never get down to it, and so subtle that many other writers who think
they see it never in fact really comprehend it.

_Twenty-four_

In the choice of reading the individual must count; caprice must
count, for caprice is often the truest index to the individuality.

_Twenty-five_

There is an infection in the air of London, a zymotic influence
which is the mysterious cause of unnaturalness, pose, affectation,
artificiality, moral neuritis, and satiety. One loses grasp of the
essentials in an undue preoccupation with the vacuities which society
has invented. The distractions are too multiform. One never gets a
chance to talk common-sense with one’s soul.

_Twenty-six_

An early success is a snare. The inexperienced author takes too much
for granted. Conceit overcomes him. He regards himself with an undue
seriousness. He thinks that he is founded on granite for ever.

_Twenty-seven_

The splendid pertinacity and ingenuity of the American journalist
in wringing copy out of any and every side of existence cannot fail
to quicken the pulse of those who are accustomed to the soberer,
narrower, sleepier ways of English newspapers. Fleet Street pretends
to despise and contemn American methods, yet a gradual Americanising
of the English press is always taking place, with results on the
whole admirable.

_Twenty-eight_

Stand defiantly on your own feet, and do not excuse yourself to
yourself.

_Twenty-nine_

This is a matter of daily observation: that people are frantically
engaged in attempting to get hold of things which, by universal
experience, are hideously disappointing to those who have obtained
possession of them.

_Thirty_

It is a current impression that style is something apart from,
something foreign to, matter--a beautiful robe which, once it is
found, may be used to clothe the nudity of matter. Young writers
wander forth searching for style, as one searches for that which is
hidden. They might employ themselves as profitably in looking for the
noses on their faces. For style is personal, as much a portion of
one’s self as the voice. It is within, not without; it needs only to
be elicited, brought to light.

_Thirty-one_

When I had been in London a decade, I stood aside from myself and
reviewed my situation with the god-like and detached impartiality
of a trained artistic observer. And what I saw was a young man who
pre-eminently knew his way about, and who was apt to be rather too
complacent over this fact; a young man with some brilliance but far
more shrewdness; a young man with a highly developed faculty for
making a little go a long way; a young man who was accustomed to be
listened to when he thought fit to speak, and who was decidedly more
inclined to settle questions than to raise them.

_September_

_One_

It is of no use beginning to air one’s views until one has collected
an audience.

_Two_

A man whom fate had pitched into a canal might accomplish miracles in
the way of rendering himself amphibian: he might stagger the world by
the spectacle of his philosophy under amazing difficulties; people
might pay sixpence a head to come and see him; but he would be less
of a nincompoop if he climbed out and arranged to live definitely on
the bank.

_Three_

The contemplation of hills is uplifting to the soul; it leads to
inspiration and induces nobility of character.

_Four_

Plot is the primary thing in fiction. Only a very clever craftsman
can manipulate a feeble plot so as to make it even passably
interesting. Whereas, the clumsiest bungler in narration cannot
altogether spoil a really sound plot.

_Five_

It cannot be too clearly understood that the professional author, the
man who depends entirely on his pen for the continuance of breath,
and whose income is at the mercy of an illness or a headache, is
eternally compromising between glory and something more edible and
warmer at nights. He labours, in the first place, for food, shelter,
tailors, a woman, European travel, horses, stalls at the opera, good
cigars, ambrosial evenings in restaurants; and he gives glory the
best chance he can. I am not speaking of geniuses with a mania for
posterity; I am speaking of human beings.

_Six_

The average man flourishes and finds his ease in an atmosphere of
peaceful routine. Men destined for success flourish and find their
ease in an atmosphere of collision and disturbance.

_Seven_

There are simply thousands of agreeable and good girls who can
accomplish herring-bone, omelettes, and simultaneous equations in a
breath, as it were. They are all over the kingdom, and may be seen in
the streets and lanes thereof about half-past eight in the morning
and again about five o’clock in the evening. But the fact is not
generally known. Only the stern and base members of School Boards or
Education Committees know it. And they are so used to marvels that
they make nothing of them.

_Eight_

In the sea of literature every part communicates with every other
part; there are no land-locked lakes.

_Nine_

With an obedient, disciplined brain a man may live always right up to
the standard of his best moments.

_Ten_

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.

_Eleven_

If I have an aptitude for anything at all in letters, it is for
criticism. Whenever I read a book of imagination, I am instantly
filled with ideas concerning it; I form definite views about its
merit or demerit, and, having formed them, I hold those views with
strong conviction. Denial of them rouses me; I must thump the table
in support of them; I must compel people to believe that what I say
is true; I cannot argue without getting serious, in spite of myself.

_Twelve_

The great convenience of masterpieces is that they are so
astonishingly lucid.

_Thirteen_

It is as well not to chatter too much about what one is doing, and
not to betray a too-pained sadness at the spectacle of a whole world
deliberately wasting so many hours out of every day, and therefore
never really living. It will be found, ultimately, that in taking
care of one’s self one has quite all one can do.

_Fourteen_

Think as well as read. I know people who read and read, and, for all
the good it does them, they might just as well cut bread-and-butter.
They take to reading as better men take to drink. They fly through
the shires of literature on a motor-car, their sole object being
motion. They will tell you how many books they have read in a year.

_Fifteen_

The mass could not, and never at any period of history did,
appreciate fine art, but could and would appreciate and support
passable deteriorations of fine art.

_Sixteen_

Honesty, in literature as in life, is the quality that counts first
and counts last.

_Seventeen_

No author ever lived who could write a page without giving himself
away.

_Eighteen_

To be one’s natural self is the most difficult thing in literature.
To be one’s natural self in a drawing-room full of observant eyes
is scarcely the gift of the simple debutant, but rather of the
experienced diner-out. So in literature: it is not the expert but the
unpractised beginner who is guilty of artificiality.

_Nineteen_

Much nonsense has been talked about the short story. It has been
asserted that Englishmen cannot write artistic short stories, that
the short story does not come naturally to the Anglo-Saxon. Whereas
the truth is that nearly all the finest short-story writers in the
world to-day are Englishmen, and some of the most wonderful short
stories ever written have been written by Englishmen within the last
twenty years.

_Twenty_

If a book really moves you to anger, the chances are that it is a
good book.

_Twenty-one_

In the cultivation of the mind one of the most important factors is
precisely the feeling of strain, of difficulty, of a task which one
part of you is anxious to achieve and another part of you is anxious
to shirk.

_Twenty-two_

The very greatest poetry can only be understood and savoured by
people who have put themselves through a considerable mental
discipline. To others it is an exasperating weariness.

_Twenty-three_

_Samuel Johnson’s Birthday_

Even Johnson’s Dictionary is packed with emotion.

_Twenty-four_

All blame, uttered or unexpressed, is wrong. I do not blame myself. I
can explain myself to myself. I can invariably explain myself.

_Twenty-five_

When one has thoroughly got imbued into one’s head the leading
truth that nothing happens without a cause, one grows not only
large-minded, but large-hearted.

_Twenty-six_

If an editor knows not peace, he knows power. In Fleet Street, as
in other streets, the population divides itself into those who want
something and those who have something to bestow; those who are
anxious to give a lunch, and those who deign occasionally to accept
a lunch; those who have an axe to grind, and those who possess the
grindstone.

_Twenty-seven_

Regard, for a moment, the average household in the light of a
business organisation for lodging and feeding a group of individuals;
contrast its lapses, makeshifts, delays, irregularities, continual
excuses with the awful precision of a city office. Is it a matter
for surprise that the young woman who is accustomed gaily to remark,
“Only five minutes late this morning, father,” or “I quite forgot to
order the coals, dear,” confident that a frown or a hard word will
end the affair, should carry into business (be it never so grave) the
laxities so long permitted her in the home?

_Twenty-eight_

This I know and affirm, that the average woman-journalist is the
most loyal, earnest, and teachable person under the sun. I begin
to feel sentimental when I think of her astounding earnestness,
even in grasping the live coal of English syntax. Syntax, bane of
writing-women, I have spent scores of ineffectual hours in trying to
inoculate the ungrammatical sex against your terrors!

_Twenty-nine_

I have never refused work when the pay has been good.

_Thirty_

There is no logical answer to a guffaw.

_October_

_One_

A most curious and useful thing to realise is that one never knows
the impression one is creating on other people.

_Two_

At seventy men begin to be separated from their fellow-creatures. At
eighty they are like islets sticking out of a sea. At eighty-five,
with their trembling and deliberate speech, they are the abstract
voice of human wisdom. They gather wisdom with amazing rapidity in
the latter years, and even their folly is wise then.

_Three_

In its essence all fiction is wildly improbable, and its fundamental
improbability is masked by an observance of probability in details.

_Four_

Only reviewers have a prejudice against long novels.

_Five_

The most important of all perceptions is the continual perception of
cause and effect--in other words, the perception of the continuous
development of the universe--in still other words, the perception of
the course of evolution.

_Six_

No 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).

_Seven_

The beauty of a classic is not at all apt to knock you down. It will
steal over you, rather.

_Eight_

Self-respect is at the root of all purposefulness, and a failure in
an enterprise deliberately planned deals a desperate wound at one’s
self-respect.

_Nine_

A man may be a sub-editor, or even an assistant-editor, for half
a lifetime, and yet remain ignorant of the true significance of
journalism.

_Ten_

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.

_Eleven_

The heart is convinced that custom is a virtue. The heart of the
dirty working-man rebels when the State insists that he shall be
clean, for no other reason than that it is his custom to be dirty.

_Twelve_

To be honest with oneself is not so simple as it appears.

_Thirteen_

“My wife will never understand,” said Mr. Brindley, “that complete
confidence between two human beings is impossible.”

_Fourteen_

Demanding honesty from your authors, you must see that you render it
yourself.

_Fifteen_

Imagine the technical difficulties of a painter whose canvas was
always being rolled off one stick on to another stick, and who was
compelled to do his picture inch by inch, seeing nothing but the
particular inch which happened to be under his brush. That difficulty
is only one of the difficulties of the novelist.

_Sixteen_

It is a fact that few novelists enjoy the creative labour, though
most enjoy thinking about the creative labour. Novelists enjoy
writing novels no more than ploughmen enjoy following the plough.
They regard business as a “grind.”

_Seventeen_

The born journalist comes into the world with the fixed notion
that nothing under the sun is uninteresting. He says: “I cannot
pass along the street, or cut a finger, or marry, or catch a cold
or a fish, or go to church, or perform any act whatever, without
being impressed anew by the interestingness of mundane phenomena,
and without experiencing a desire to share this impression with my
fellow-creatures.”

_Eighteen_

Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by
drawbacks and discomforts.

_Nineteen_

It is much easier to begin a novel than to finish it. This statement
applies to many enterprises, but to none with more force than to a
long art-work such as a novel or a play.

_Twenty_

A true book is not always great. But a great book is never untrue.

_Twenty-one_

The impossible had occurred. I was no longer a mere journalist; I was
an author. “After all, it’s nothing,” I said, with that intense and
unoriginal humanity which distinguishes all of us. And in a blinding
flash I saw that an author was in essence the same thing as a grocer
or a duke.

_Twenty-two_

When the reason and the heart come into conflict the heart is
invariably wrong.

_Twenty-three_

Marriage is excessively prosaic and eternal, not at all what you
expect it to be.

_Twenty-four_

I do not forget that the realism of one age is the conventionality
of the next. In the main the tendency of art is always to reduce
and simplify its conventions, thus necessitating an increase of
virtuosity in order to obtain the same effects of shapeliness and
rhythm.

_Twenty-five_

For the majority of people the earth is a dull planet. It is only a
Stevenson who can say: “I never remember being bored,” and one may
fairly doubt whether even Stevenson uttered truth when he made that
extraordinary statement. None of us escapes boredom entirely; some of
us, indeed, are bored during the greater part of our lives. The fact
is unpalatable, but it is a fact.

_Twenty-six_

An average of over an hour a day given to the mind should permanently
and completely enliven the whole activity of the mind.

_Twenty-seven_

A large class of people positively resent being thrilled by a work of
fiction, and the domestic serial is meant to appeal to this class.

_Twenty-eight_

It is natural that people who concern themselves with art only in
their leisure moments, demanding from it nothing but a temporary
distraction, should prefer the obvious to the recondite, and should
walk regardless of beauty unless it forces itself upon their
attention by means of exaggerations and advertisement. The public
wants to be struck, hit squarely in the face; then it will take
notice.

_Twenty-nine_

When a book attains a large circulation one usually says that it
succeeds. But the fine books succeed of themselves, by their own
virtue, and apart from the acclamatory noises of fame. Immure them in
cabinets, cast them into Sahara; still they imperturbably succeed.
If, on a rare occasion, such a book sells by scores of thousands, it
is not the book but the public which succeeds; it is not the book but
the public which has emerged splendidly from a trial.

_Thirty_

The artists who have courage fully to exploit their own temperaments
are always sufficiently infrequent to be peculiarly noticeable and
welcome. Still more rare are they who, leaving it to others to sing
and emphasise the ideal and obvious beauties which all can in some
measure see, will exclusively exercise the artist’s prerogative as an
explorer of hidden and recondite beauty in unsuspected places.

_Thirty-one_

Bad books, by flattering you, by caressing, by appealing to the weak
or the base in you, will often persuade you what fine and splendid
books they are.

_November_

_One_

It is well to remind ourselves that literature is first and last a
means of life, and that the enterprise of forming one’s literary
taste is an enterprise of learning how best to use this means of life.

_Two_

Instead of saying, “Sorry I can’t see you, old chap, but I have to
run off to the tennis club,” you must say, “... But I have to work.”
This, I admit, is intensely difficult to say. Tennis is so much more
urgent than the immortal soul.

_Three_

A talent never persuades or encourages the owner of it; it drives him
with a whip.

_Four_

One of the chief things which one has to learn is that the mental
faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity; they do not tire
like an arm or a leg. All they want is change, not rest, except in
sleep.

_Five_

Characterisation, the feat of individualising characters, is the
inmost mystery of imaginative literary art. It is of the very essence
of the novel. It never belongs to this passage or that. It is
implicit in the whole. It is always being done, and is never finished
till the last page is written.

_Six_

Can you deny that when you have something definite to look forward to
at eventide, something that is to employ all your energy, the thought
of that something gives a glow and a more intense vitality to the
whole day?

_Seven_

Most good books have begun by causing anger which disguised itself as
contempt.

_Eight_

When a thing is supreme there is nothing to be said.

_Nine_

_Ivan Sergeïtch Turgenev’s Birthday_

The author of a miracle like _On the Eve_ may be born, but he is
also made. In the matter of condensation alone Turgenev was unique
among the great literary artificers. He could say more in a chapter
of two thousand words than any other novelist that ever lived. What
he accomplishes again and again in a book of sixty thousand words,
Tolstoi could not have accomplished under a quarter of a million.

_Ten_

Fine taste in fiction is almost as rare among novelists as among the
general public.

_Eleven_

I have never once produced any literary work without a preliminary
incentive quite other than the incentive of ebullient imagination.
I have never “wanted to write,” until the extrinsic advantages of
writing had presented themselves to me.

_Twelve_

Beauty is strangely various. There is the beauty of light and joy and
strength exulting; but there is also the beauty of shade, of sorrow
and sadness, and of humility oppressed. The spirit of the sublime
dwells not only in the high and remote; it shines unperceived amid
all the usual meannesses of our daily existence.

_Thirteen_

Always give your fellow creature credit for good intentions. Do not
you, though sometimes mistakenly, always act for the best? You know
you do. And are you alone among mortals in rectitude?

_Fourteen_

There is no such case as the average case, just as there is no such
man as the average man. Every man and every man’s case is special.

_Fifteen_

Outside the department of fiction there are two kinds of
authors--those who want to write because they have something definite
to say, and those who want something definite to say because they can
write.

_Sixteen_

A lover is one who deludes himself; a journalist is one who deludes
himself and other people.

_Seventeen_

Although a very greedy eater of literature, I can only enjoy reading
when I have little time for reading. Give me three hours of absolute
leisure with nothing to do but read, and I instantly become almost
incapable of the act.

_Eighteen_

I would point out that literature by no means comprises the whole
field of knowledge, and that the disturbing thirst to improve one’s
self--to increase one’s knowledge--may well be slaked quite apart
from literature.

_Nineteen_

The public, by its casual approval, may give notoriety and a vogue
which passes, but it is incapable of the sustained ardour of
appreciation which alone results in authentic renown. It is incapable
because it is nonchalant. To the public art is a very little thing--a
distraction, the last resort against _ennui_. To the critics art
looms enormous. They do not merely possess views; they are possessed
by them. Their views amount to a creed, and that creed must be
spread. Quiescence is torment to the devotee. He cannot cry peace
when there is no peace. Passionate conviction, like murder, will out.
“I believe; therefore you must believe”: that is the motto which
moves the world.

_Twenty_

Only those who have lived at the full stretch seven days a week for
a long time can appreciate the full beauty of a regularly recurring
idleness.

_Twenty-one_

Publishers as a commercial class are neither more nor less honourable
than any other commercial class, and authors are neither more nor
less honourable than publishers. In the world of commerce one fights
for one’s own hand and keeps within the law; the code is universally
understood, and the man who thinks it ought to be altered because
_he_ happens to be inexperienced, is a fool.

_Twenty-two_

There can be no sort of doubt that unless I was prepared to flout the
wisdom of the ages, I ought to have refused his suggestion. But is
not the wisdom of the ages a medicine for majorities? And, indeed, I
was prepared to flout it, as in our highest and our lowest moments we
often are.

_Twenty-three_

London is chiefly populated by greyhaired men who for twenty years
have been about to become journalists and authors. And but for a
fortunate incident--the thumb of my Fate has always been turned
up--I might ere this have fallen back into that tragic rearguard of
Irresolutes.

_Twenty-four_

I think it is rather fine, this necessity for the tense bracing of
the will before anything worth doing can be done. I rather like it
myself. I feel it to be the chief thing that differentiates me from
the cat by the fire.

_Twenty-five_

The most important preliminary to the task of arranging one’s life so
that one may live fully and comfortably within one’s daily budget of
twenty-four hours, is the calm realisation of the extreme difficulty
of the task, of the sacrifices and the endless effort it demands.

_Twenty-six_

Whatever sin a man does he either does for his own benefit or for the
benefit of society.

_Twenty-seven_

The critic’s first requisite is that he should be interested. A man
may have an instinctive good taste, but if his attitude is one of
apathy, then he is not a true critic. The opinions of the public are
often wrong; the opinions of the critic are usually right. But the
fundamental difference between these two bodies does not lie here; it
lies in the fact that the critics “care,” while the public does not
care.

_Twenty-eight_

When, after the theatre, a woman precedes a man into a carriage, does
she not publish and glory in the fact that she is his? Is it not the
most delicious of avowals? There is something in the enforced bend of
one’s head as one steps in. And when the man shuts the door with a
masculine snap----

_Twenty-nine_

Ardour in well-doing is a misleading and a treacherous thing. It
cries out loudly for employment; you can’t satisfy it at first; it
wants more and more; it is eager to move mountains and divert the
course of rivers; it isn’t content till it perspires. And then, too
often, when it feels the perspiration on its brow, it wearies all
of a sudden and dies, without even putting itself to the trouble of
saying, “I’ve had enough of this.”

_Thirty_

Literature exists so that where one man has lived finely ten thousand
may afterwards live finely.

_December_

_One_

To hear a master play a scale, to catch that measured, tranquil
succession of notes, each a different jewel of equal splendour, each
dying precisely when the next was born--this is to perceive at last
what music is made of, to have glimpses of the divine magic that is
the soul of the divinest art.

_Two_

When the swimmer unclothes, and abandons himself to the water, naked,
letting the water caress the whole of his nakedness, moving his limbs
in voluptuous ease untrammelled by even the lightest garment, then,
as never under other conditions, he is aware of his body; and perhaps
the thought occurs to him that to live otherwise than in that naked
freedom is not to live.

_Three_

Has it never struck you that you have at hand a machine wonderful
beyond all mechanisms in sheds, intricate, delicately adjustable, of
astounding and miraculous possibilities, interminably interesting?
That machine is yourself.

_Four_

The sound reputation of an artist is originally due never to the
public, but to the critics. I do not use the word “critic” in a
limited, journalistic sense; it is meant to include all those
persons, whether scribes or not, who have genuine convictions about
art.

_Five_

The movement for opening museums on Sundays is the most natural
movement that could be conceived. For if ever a resort was invented
and fore-ordained to chime with the true spirit of the British
Sabbath, that resort is the average museum.

_Six_

The manufacture of musical comedy is interesting and curious, but I
am not aware that it has anything to do with dramatic art.

_Seven_

Though you have the wealth of a cloak-room attendant at the Carlton
Hotel, you cannot buy yourself a minute more time than I have, or the
cat by the fire has.

_Eight_

The man of business, even in the very daily act of deceit, will never
yield up the conviction that, after all, at bottom he is crystal
honest. It is his darling delusion.

_Nine_

Happiness is not joy, and it is not tranquillity. It is something
deeper and something more disturbing. Perhaps it is an acute sense of
life, a realisation of one’s secret being, a continual renewal of the
mysterious savour of existence.

_Ten_

Our best plays, as works of art, are strikingly inferior to our best
novels. A large section of the educated public ignores the modern
English theatre as being unworthy of attention.

_Eleven_

Romance, interest, dwell not in the thing seen, but in the eye of the
beholder.

_Twelve_

Every bookish person has indulgently observed the artless absorption
and surrender with which a “man of action” reads when by chance a
book captures him, his temporary monomania, his insistence that
the bookish person shall share his joy, and his impatience at any
exhibition of indifference. For the moment the terrible man of action
is a child again; he who has straddled the world is like a provincial
walking with open-mouthed delight through the streets of the capital.

_Thirteen_

The woman who quarrels with a maid is clumsy, and the woman who
quarrels with a good maid is either a fool or in a nervous,
hysterical condition, or both.

_Fourteen_

Men have a habit of taking themselves for granted, and that habit is
responsible for nine-tenths of the boredom and despair on the face of
the planet.

_Fifteen_

Anyone can learn to write, and to write well, in any given style;
but to see, to discern the interestingness which is veiled from the
crowd--that comes not by tuition; rather by intuition.

_Sixteen_

The forms of faith change, but the spirit of faith is immortal amid
its endless vicissitudes.

_Seventeen_

Consider the attitude of Dissenters of the trading and industrial
classes towards the art of literature.... That attitude is at once
timid, antagonistic, and resentful. Timid, because print still has
for the unlettered a mysterious sanction; antagonistic because
Puritanism and the arts have by no means yet settled their quarrel;
resentful because the autocratic power of art over the imagination
and the intelligence is felt without being understood.

_Eighteen_

It is said that men are only interested in themselves. The truth is
that, as a rule, men are interested in every mortal thing except
themselves.

_Nineteen_

It is less difficult, I should say, to succeed moderately in
journalism than to succeed moderately in dressmaking.

_Twenty_

Music cannot be said. One art cannot be translated into another.

_Twenty-one_

A deep-seated objection to the intrusion of even the most loved male
at certain times is common, I think, to all women. Women are capable
of putting love aside, like a rich dress, and donning the _peignoir_
of matter-of-fact dailiness, in a way which is an eternal enigma to
men.

_Twenty-two_

There’s nothing like a corpse for putting everything at sixes and
sevens.

_Twenty-three_

Great grief is democratic, levelling--not downwards but upwards.
It strips away the inessential and makes brothers. It is impatient
with all the unavailable inventions which obscure the brotherhood of
mankind.

_Twenty-four_

The expression of the soul by means of the brain and body is what we
call the art of “living.”

_Twenty-five_

That Christmas has lost some of its magic is a fact that the
common-sense of the western hemisphere will not dispute. To blink the
fact is infantile. To confront it, to try to understand it, to reckon
with it, and to obviate any evil that may attach to it--this course
alone is meet for an honest man.

_Twenty-six_

It must be admitted in favour of the Five Towns that, when its
inhabitants spill milk, they do not usually sit down on the pavement
and adulterate the milk with their tears. They pass on. Such passing
on is termed callous and coldhearted in the rest of England, which
loves to sit down on pavements and weep into irretrievable milk.

_Twenty-seven_

At thirty the chances are that a man will understand better the
draughts of a chimney than his own respiratory apparatus--to name one
of the simple, obvious things; and as for understanding the working
of his own brain--what an idea!

_Twenty-eight_

Science is making it increasingly difficult to conceive matter apart
from spirit. Everything lives. Even my razor gets “tired.”

_Twenty-nine_

No book in any noble library is so interesting, so revealing, as the
catalogue of it.

_Thirty_

Love is the greatest thing in life; one may, however, question
whether it should be counted greater than life itself.

_Thirty-one_

The indispensable preparation for brain-discipline is to form the
habit of regarding one’s brain as an instrument exterior to one’s
self, like a tongue or a foot.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.