George Gissing quotes

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)
For the man sound in body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every sky has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously.
George Gissing
No, no; women, old or young, should never have to think about money.
George Gissing
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 it moves at all.
George Gissing
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.
George Gissing
Time is money says the proverb, but turn it around and you get a precious truth. Money is time.
George Gissing
It is our duty never to speak ill of others, you know; least of all when we know that to do so will be the cause of much pain and trouble.
George Gissing
Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event.
George Gissing
To be at other people's orders brings out all the bad in me.
George Gissing
A man who comes to be hanged,' pursued Jasper, impartially, 'has the satisfaction of knowing that he has brought society to its last resource. He is a man of such fatal importance that nothing will serve against him but the supreme effort of law. In a way, you know, that is success.
George Gissing
That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be generous. (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
Have the courage of your desire.
George Gissing
Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice.
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
London is a huge shop, with a hotel on the upper storeys.
George Gissing
What are we doing all our lives but purchasing, or trying to purchase, time? And most of us, having grasped it with one hand, throw it away with the other.
George Gissing
The thought, however, of his girls having to work for money was so utterly repulsive to him that he could never seriously dwell upon it.
George Gissing
The insult was thrown out with a peculiarly reckless air; it astounded the hearer, who sat for an instant with staring eyes and lips apart; then the blood rushed to his cheeks.
George Gissing
Now he was indifferent to all "questions" save that prime solicitude of the human race, how to hold its own against the hostile forces everywhere leagued against it. Life was a perpetual struggle, and, let dreamers say what they might, could never be anything else; he, for one, perceived no right that he had to claim exemption from the doom of labour. Had he felt an impulse to any other kind of work, well and good, he would have turned to it; but nothing whatever called to him with imperative voice save this task of tilling his own acres. It might not always satisfy him; he took no vow of one sole vocation; he had no desire to let his mind rust whilst his hands grew horny. Enough that for the present he had an aim which he saw as a reality.
George Gissing
This writer, who is horribly perspicacious and vigorous, demonstrates the certainty of a great European war, and regards it with the peculiar satisfaction excited by such things in a certain order of mind. His phrases about "dire calamity" and so on mean nothing; the whole tenor of his writing proves that he represents, and consciously, one of the forces which go to bring war about; his part in the business is a fluent irresponsibility, which casts scorn on all who reluct at the "inevitable." Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event. (George Gissing)
Perhaps it is while drinking tea that I most of all enjoy the sense of leisure.
George Gissing
I maintain that we people of brains are justified in supplying the mob with the food it likes.
George Gissing
Time is money - says the vulgarest saw known to any age or people. Turn it round about, and you get a precious truth -money is time.
George Gissing
I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is a trade.
George Gissing