George Gissing

The mere chink of cups and saucers tunes the mind to happy repose.

Have the courage of your desire.

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.

One of the shining moments of my day is that when, having returned a little weary form an afternoon walk, I exchange boots for slippers, out-of-doors coat for easy, familiar, shabby jacket, and, in my deep, soft-elbowed chair, await the tea-tray.

Perhaps it is while drinking tea that I most of all enjoy the sense of leisure.

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.

The first time I read an excellent work, it is to me just as if I gained a new friend; and when I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting of an old one.

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.

Time is money says the proverb, but turn it around and you get a precious truth. Money is time.

Parks are but pavement disguised with a growth of grass.

Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event.

Human creatures have a mervellous power of adapting themselves to necessity.

That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be generous.

For the man sound of body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every day has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously.

Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice.