“Well, I wasn't going to abuse him. I was only going to ask: Is there any quality which distinguishes his work from that of twenty struggling writers one could name? Of course not. He's a clever, prolific man; so are they. But he began with money and friends; he came from Oxford into the thick of advertised people; his name was mentioned in print six times a week before he had written a dozen articles. This kind of thing will become the rule. Men won't succeed in literature that they may get into society, but will get into society that they may succeed in literature.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“But just understand the difference between a man like Reardon and a man like me. He is the old type of unpractical artist; I am the literary man of 1882. He won't make concessions, or rather, he can't make them; he can't supply the market. I--well, you may say that at present, I do nothing; but that's a great mistake, I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets; when one kind of goods begins to go off slackly, he is ready with something new and appetising. He knows perfectly all the possible sources of income. Whatever he has to sell, he'll get payment for it from all sorts of various quarters; none of your unpractical selling for a lump sum to a middleman who will make six distinct profits.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“—Amy said that would be an imprudent expense; but as soon as he had got a good price for a book. Will not the publishers be kind? If they knew what happiness lurked in embryo within their foolish cheque-books!”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“Poverty will make the best people bad, if it gets hard enough. Why there’s so much of it in the world, I’m sure I can’t see.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“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”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“To the relatively poor (who are so much worse off than the poor absolutely) education is in most cases a mocking cruelty.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“Refuge from despair is often found in the passion of self-pity and that spirit of obstinate resistance which it engenders. In”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“Dora kept her eyes down, and smiled ambiguously.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“That of the British Museum Reading-room,’ explained Jasper; ‘known to some of us as the valley of the shadow of books. People who often work there necessarily get to know each other by sight. In the same way I knew Miss Yule’s father when I happened to pass him in the road yesterday.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“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.' 'In”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“Poverty doesn’t allow of honourable feeling, any more than of compassion.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“One doesn’t like to do brutal things if one can avoid them, you know.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“The sum of their faults was their inability to earn money; but, indeed, that inability does not call for unmingled disdain.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“He was in spring costume, and exhaled fresh odours. The”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“In passion, I can fling out violent words, but they don’t yet answer to my actual feeling. It will be long enough yet before I think contemptuously of you. You know that when a light is suddenly extinguished, the image of it still shows before your eyes. But at last comes the darkness.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“Her womanhood went eagerly to meet him.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“The unhoped was all but granted her. She could labour on in the valley of the shadow of books, for a ray of dazzling sunshine might at any moment strike into its musty gloom.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“It was always in your power to rule me. What pained me worst, and hardened me against you, was that I saw you didn’t care to exert your influence. There was never a time when I could have resisted a word of yours spoken out of your love for me. But even then, I am afraid, you no longer loved me, and now —— ”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“Think of the very words “novel,” “romance” — what do they mean but exaggeration of one bit of life?”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“Mr Biffen,’ wrote another, ‘seems not to understand that a work of art must before everything else afford amusement.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“The best moments of life are those when we contemplate beauty in the purely artistic spirit — objectively. I”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“Poverty can’t rob me of those memories. I have lived in an ideal world that was not deceitful, a world which seems to me, when I recall it, beyond the human sphere, bathed in diviner light.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“Walker's a fool and Quarmby's an ass,' remarked her father.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“I maintain that we people of brains are justified in supplying the mob with the food it likes. We”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice, was a characterising note of Mr Fadge’s periodical; his”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“Confound it! It's just because nobody does anything that things have come to this pass!”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“My mistake was that of numberless men nowadays. Because I was conscious of brains, I thought that the only place for me was London. It”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“The art of living is the art of compromise. We”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
“Well, Maud made a mistake, let us say. Dolomore is a clown, and now she knows it.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
George Gissing
Born place: in Wakefield, Yorkshire, The United Kingdom
Born date November 23, 1857
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“Me and the folks who buy my food are like the Indians -- we just want to opt out. That's all the Indians ever wanted -- to keep their tepees, to give their kids herbs instead of patent medicines and leeches. They didn't care if there was a Washington, D.C., or a Custer or a USDA; just leave us alone. But the Western mind can't bear an opt-out option. We're going to have to refight the Battle of the Little Big Horn to preserve the right to opt out, or your grandchildren and mine will have no choice but to eat amalgamated, irradiated, genetically prostituted, barcoded, adulterated fecal spam from the centralized processing conglomerate.”
― Michael Pollan, quote from The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
“I suppose a lot of teenage girls feel invisible sometimes, like they just disappear. Well, that's me—Cammie the Chameleon. But I'm luckier than most because, at my school, that's considered cool.
I go to a school for spies.”
― Ally Carter, quote from I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You
“Well enough,” I reply. “Remember, you’re drunk. And happy. You’re supposed to be lusting over your escort. Try smiling a little more.”
Day plasters a giant artificial smile on his face. As charming as ever. “Aw, come on, sweetheart. I thought I was doing a pretty good job. I got my arm around the prettiest escort on this block—how could I not be lusting over you? Don’t I look like I’m lusting? This is me, lusting.” His lashes flutter at me.
He looks so ridiculous that I can’t help laughing. Another passerby glances at me. “Much better.”
― Marie Lu, quote from Prodigy
“Not all of Anthony’s officers, however, were eager or even willing to join Chivington’s well-planned massacre. Captain Silas Soule, Lieutenant Joseph Cramer, and Lieutenant James Connor protested that an attack on Black Kettle’s peaceful camp would violate the pledge of safety given the Indians by both Wynkoop and Anthony, “that it would be murder in every sense of the word,” and any officer participating would dishonor the uniform of the Army.”
― Dee Brown, quote from Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
“Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty.”
― Muriel Barbery, quote from The Elegance of the Hedgehog
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