A. C. Benson Quotes

Man, an animal that makes bargains.

People seldom refuse help, if one offers it in the right way.

I am sure it is one’s duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one’s own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.

As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow.

I expect that all of us get pretty much what we deserve of appreciation.

People who deal with life generously and large-heartedly go on multiplying relationships to the end.

A well begun is half ended.

I don’t like authority, at least I don’t like other people’s authority.

The joy of all mysteries is the certainty which comes from their contemplation, that there are many doors yet for the soul to open on her upward and inward way.

I never enter a new company without the hope that I may discover a friend, perhaps the friend, sitting there with an expectant smile. That hope survives a thousand disappointments.

Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.

All the best stories are but one story in reality – the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

I believe in instinct, not reason. When reason is right, nine times out of ten it is impotent, and when it prevails, nine times out of ten it is wrong.

Keeping up appearances is the most expensive thing in the world.

The friend is the person whom one is in need of and by whom one is needed.

There remain times when one can only endure. One lives on, one doesn’t die, and the only thing that one can do, is to fill one’s mind and time as far as possible with the concerns of other people. It doesn’t bring immediate peace, but it brings the dawn nearer.

The moment that any life, however good, stifles you, you may be sure it isn’t your real life.

The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortunes, but its fears.

Do you know the times when one seems to stick fast in circumstances like the fly in the jam-pot? It can’t be helped, and I suppose the best thing to do is to lay in a good store of jam!

When you get to my age life seems little more than one long march to and from the lavatory.

One’s mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.

Congenial labor is the secret of happiness.

It seems sometimes as if one were powerless to do any more from within to overcome troubles, and that help must come from without.

It is often wonderful how putting down on paper a clear statement of a case helps one to see, not perhaps the way out, but the way in.

Readjusting is a painful process, but most of us need it at one time or another.