New Grub Street Quotes

“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, 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, 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, New Grub Street

“But the loneliness of her life had developed in her a sensitiveness which could not endure situations such as the present; difficulties which are of small account to people who take their part in active social life, harassed her to the destruction of all peace.”
― George Gissing, 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, New Grub Street

“My aim is to have easy command of all the pleasures desired by a cultivated man. I want to live among beautiful things, and never to be troubled by a thought of vulgar difficulties. I want to travel and enrich my mind in foreign countries. I want to associate on equal terms with refined and interesting people. I want to be known, to be familiarly referred to, to feel when I enter a room that people regard me with some curiosity.”
― George Gissing, 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, New Grub Street

“A few days ago her startled eye had caught an advertisement in the newspaper, headed 'Literary Machine'; had it then been invented at last, some automaton to supply the place of such poor creatures as herself to turn out books and articles? Alas! the machine was only one for holding volumes conveniently, that the work of literary manufacture might be physically lightened. But surely before long some Edison would make the true automaton; the problem must be comparatively such a simple one. Only to throw in a given number of old books, and have them reduced, blended, modernised into a single one for to-day's consumption.”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“Confound it! It's just because nobody does anything that things have come to this pass!”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“Since the publication of his first book he had avoided as far as possible all knowledge of what the critics had to say about him; his nervous temperament could not bear the agitation of reading these remarks, which, however inept, define an author and his work to so many people incapable of judging for themselves.”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“The art of living is the art of compromise.”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“The best moments of life are those when we contemplate beauty in the purely artistic spirit — objectively.”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“Refuge from despair is often found in the passion of self-pity and that spirit of obstinate resistance which it engenders.”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“Her womanhood went eagerly to meet him.”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“Will not the publishers be kind? If they knew what happiness lurked in embryo within their foolish cheque-books!”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“I can't break it up. The thoughts come in a lump, if I may say so. To break it up — there's the art of compersition.”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“I have never upheld the theory—at least not since I was sixteen—that a man can be in love only once, or that there is one particular woman if he misses whom he can never be happy. There may be thousands of women whom I could love with equal sincerity.”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“I object to the word “love” altogether. It has been vulgarised. Let us talk about compatibility. Now, I should say that, no doubt, and speaking scientifically, there is one particular woman supremely fitted to each man. I put aside consideration of circumstances; we know that circumstances will disturb any degree of abstract fitness. But in the nature of things there must be one woman whose nature is specially well adapted to harmonise with mine, or with yours. If there were any means of discovering this woman in each case, then I have no doubt it would be worth a man’s utmost effort to do so, and any amount of erotic jubilation would be reasonable when the discovery was made. But the thing is impossible, and, what’s more, we know what ridiculous fallibility people display when they imagine they have found the best substitute for that indiscoverable. This is what makes me impatient with sentimental talk about marriage. An educated man mustn’t play so into the hands of ironic destiny. Let him think he wants to marry a woman; but don’t let him exaggerate his feelings or idealise their nature.”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“Some great and noble sorrow may have the effect of drawing hearts together, but to struggle against destitution, to be crushed by care about shillings and sixpences — that must always degrade.”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“She read a good deal of that kind of literature which may be defined as specialism popularised; writing which addresses itself to educated, but not strictly studious, persons, and which forms the reservoir of conversation for society above the sphere of turf and west-endism. Thus, for instance, though she could not undertake the volumes of Herbert Spencer, she was intelligently acquainted with the tenor of their contents; and though she had never opened one of Darwin’s books, her knowledge of his main theories and illustrations was respectable. She was becoming a typical woman of the new time, the woman who has developed concurrently with journalistic enterprise.”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“Isn’t it a most ridiculous thing that married people who both wish to separate can’t do so and be quite free again?’

‘I suppose it would lead to all sorts of troubles — don’t you think?’

‘So people say about every new step in civilisation. What would have been thought twenty years ago of a proposal to make all married women independent of their husbands in money matters? All sorts of absurd dangers were foreseen, no doubt. And it’s the same now about divorce. In America people can get divorced if they don’t suit each other — at all events in some of the States — and does any harm come of it? Just the opposite I should think.’

Edith mused. Such speculations were daring, but she had grown accustomed to think of Amy as an ‘advanced’ woman, and liked to imitate her in this respect.”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“He knew what poverty means. The chilling of brain and heart, the unnerving of the hands, the slow gathering about one of fear and shame and impotent wrath, the dread feeling of helplessness, of the world’s base indifference. Poverty! Poverty!”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“Well, Maud made a mistake, let us say. Dolomore is a clown, and now she knows it.”
― George Gissing, 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, New Grub Street

“Walker's a fool and Quarmby's an ass,' remarked her father.”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“Mr Biffen,’ wrote another, ‘seems not to understand that a work of art must before everything else afford amusement.”
― George Gissing, 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.”
― George Gissing, 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.”
― George Gissing, New Grub Street

“Think of the very words “novel,” “romance” — what do they mean but exaggeration of one bit of life?”
― George Gissing, 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, New Grub Street