Quotes by A. Benson

• A well begun is half ended.
• 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.
• Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.
• As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow.
• The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortunes, but its fears.
• One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.
• Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene.
• People seldom refuse help, if one offers it in the right way.
• Knowing what you can not do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that's good taste.
• 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.
• I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
• Man, an animal that makes bargains.
• When you get to my age life seems little more than one long march to and from the lavatory.