employed simultaneously with politeness.
_Five_
London is the most provincial town in England--invariably vulgar,
reactionary, hysterical, and behind the rest of the country. A nice
sort of place England would be if we in the provinces had to copy
London.
_Six_
Progress is the gradual result of the unending battle between human
reason and human instinct, in which the former slowly but surely wins.
_Seven_
As an athlete trains, as an acrobat painfully tumbles in private, so
must the literary aspirant write.
_Eight_
A classic is a work which gives pleasure to the minority which is
intensely and permanently interested in literature.
_Nine_
It is said that geography makes history. In England, and especially
in London, weather makes a good deal of history.
_Ten_
The one primary essential to literary taste is a hot interest in
literature. If you have that, all the rest will come.
_Eleven_
In the Five Towns human nature is reported to be so hard that you can
break stones on it. Yet sometimes it softens, and then we have one
of our rare idylls of which we are very proud, while pretending not
to be. The soft and delicate South would possibly not esteem highly
our idylls, as such. Nevertheless they are our idylls, idyllic for
us, and reminding us, by certain symptoms, that, though we never cry,
there is concealed somewhere within our bodies a fount of happy tears.
_Twelve_
Reason is the basis of personal dignity.
_Thirteen_
It is by the passionate few that the renown of genius is kept alive
from one generation to another.
_Fourteen_
We are all of us the same in essence; what separates us is merely
differences in our respective stages of evolution.
_Fifteen_
It is well known that dignity will only bleed while you watch it.
Avert your eyes and it instantly dries up.
_Sixteen_
All literature is the expression of feeling, of passion, of emotion,
caused by a sensation of the interestingness of life.
_Seventeen_
Just as science is the development of common-sense, so is literature
the development of common daily speech.
_Eighteen_
Every man who thinks clearly can write clearly, if not with grace and
technical correctness.
_Nineteen_
It is important, if you wish ultimately to have a wide, catholic
taste, to guard against the too common assumption that nothing modern
will stand comparison with the classics.
_Twenty_
In the matter of its own special activities the brain is usually
undisciplined and unreliable. We never know what it will do next.
_Twenty-one_
It’s the dodge of every begging-letter writer in England to mark his
envelope “Private and Urgent.”
_Twenty-two_
Women grow old; women cease to learn; but men, never.
_Twenty-three_
In literature, but in nothing else, I am a propagandist; I am not
content to keep my opinion and let others keep theirs. To have a
worthless book in my house (save in the way of business), to know
that any friend is enjoying it, actually distresses me. That book
must go, the pretensions of that book must be exposed, if I am to
enjoy peace of mind.
_Twenty-four_
I have often thought: If a son could look into a mother’s heart, what
an eyeopener he would have!
_Twenty-five_
When a writer expresses his individuality and his mood with accuracy,
lucidity, and sincerity, and with an absence of ugliness, then he
achieves good style. Style--it cannot be too clearly understood--is
not a certain splendid something which the writer adds to his
meaning. It is _in_ the meaning; it is that part of the meaning which
specially reflects his individuality and his mood.
_Twenty-six_
Crime is simply a convenient monosyllable which we apply to what
happens when the brain and the heart come into conflict and the brain
is defeated.
_Twenty-seven_
Reflect that, as a rule, the people whom you have come to esteem
communicated themselves to you gradually, that they did not begin the
entertainment with fireworks.
_Twenty-eight_
To devise the contents of an issue, to plan them, to balance them;
to sail with this wind and tack against that; to keep a sensitive,
cool finger on the faintly beating pulse of the terrible many-headed
patron; to walk in a straight line through a forest black as
midnight; to guess the riddle of the circulation-book week by week;
to know by instinct why Smiths sent in a repeat order, or why
Simpkins’ was ten quires less; to keep one eye on the majestic march
of the world, and the other on the vagaries of a bazaar-reporter
who has forgotten the law of libel; these things, and seventy-seven
others, are the real journalism. It is these things that make editors
sardonic, grey, unapproachable.
_Twenty-nine_
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_