George Moore (1852 – 1933)
Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist.
Never could I interest myself in a book if it were not the exact diet my mind required at the time, or in the very immediate future. The mind asked, received, and digested. So much was assimilated, so much expelled; then, after a season, similar demands were made, the same processes were repeated out of sight, below consciousness, as is the case in a well-ordered stomach.
It would appear that practical morality consists in making the meeting of men and women as casual as that of animals.
Love — but not marriage. Marriage means a four-post bed and papa and mamma between eleven and twelve. Love is aspiration: transparencies, colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But a wife — you know all about her — who her father was, who her mother was, what she thinks of you and her opinion of the neighbours over the way. Where, then, is the dream?
Self is man's main business; all outside of self is uncertain, all comes from self, all returns to self.
Acting is therefore the lowest of the arts, if it is an art at all.
He must put his shoulder to the wheel and get it right; one more push, that was all that was wanted.
The mind petrifies if a circle be drawn around it, and it can hardly be denied that dogma draws a circle round the mind.
I told him that he was more mob than man, always an enthusiastic listener or noisy interrupter. Yet I admired him and found myself his advocate. I wrote to Lady Gregory: "He is constantly so likeable that one can believe no evil of him, and then in a moment a kind of a devil takes hold of him, his voice changes, his look changes, and he becomes hateful... It is so hard not to trust him, and yet he is quite untrustworthy. He has what Talleyrand calls 'the terrible gift of familiarity.'"
It is said that young men of genius come to London with great poems and dramas in their pockets and find every door closed against them. Chatterton's death perpetuated this legend. But when I, George Moore, came to London in search of literary adventure, I found a ready welcome. Possibly I should not have been accorded any welcome had I been anything but an ordinary person.
The difficulty in life is the choice.
Humanity is a pigsty, where lions, hypocrites, and the obscene in spirit congregate.
One must be in London to see the spring.
After all there is but one race — humanity.
The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it... you and you alone make me feel that I am alive... Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough.
Terrible is the day when each sees his soul naked, stripped of all veil; that dear soul which he cannot change or discard, and which is so irreparably his.
I have always noticed that when a fellow wants to finish a play, the only way to do it is to go away to the country and leave no address.
A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
The public will accept a masterpiece, but it will not accept an attempt to write a masterpiece.
I can't tell you how urbane and sprightly the old poll parrot was; and (this is what I think using the brain does for one), not a pocket, not a crevice, of pomp, humbug, respectability in him: he was fresh as a daisy.
We humans are more complicated than animals, and we love through the imagination.