A Writer's Notebook Read Free Page A

it would have seemed to claim an importance for myself which would have been offensive to my fellow writers; but now I am an old man, I can be no one’s rival, for I have retired from the hurly-burly and ensconced myself not uncomfortably on the shelf. Any ambition I may have had has long since been satisfied. I contend with none not because none is worth my strife, but because I have said my say and I am well pleased to let others occupy my small place in the world of letters. I have done what I wanted to do and now silence becomes me. I am told that in these days you are quickly forgotten if you do not by some new work keep your name before the public, and I have little doubt that it is true. Well, I am prepared for that. When my obituary notice at last appears in
The Times
, and they say: “What, I thought he died years ago,” my ghost will gently chuckle.

1892
    In this year I entered the Medical School of St. Thomas’s Hospital. I spent five years there. I carefully set down the dates on which I started my first notebooks, and these dates will, I hope, serve as an extenuation of their contents. My later notebooks are undated, indeed many of my notes were scribbled on a scrap of paper or the back of an envelope, and I have had to determine when they were written by their subject matter. It may be that here and there I am a year or two out; I do not think it is of any consequence
.

    Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.

    Music-hall songs provide the dull with wit, just as proverbs provide them with wisdom.

    Good luck always brings merit, but merit very seldom brings good luck.

    Maxims of the Vicar
.
    A parson is paid to preach, not to practise.
    Only ask those people to stay with you or to dine with you, who can ask you in return.
    â€œDo unto others as you would they should do unto you.” An excellent maxim—for others.
    He always answered the contentions of the temperance people by saying that “God has ordered us to make use of the things of this world,” and he exemplified his reply by keeping himself well supplied with whisky and liqueurs, which, however, he kept carefully locked up in the sideboard. “It is not good for all people to drink spirits,” he said, “in fact it is a sin to put temptation in their way; and besides, they would not appreciate them at their true value.”
    These observations fell from the lips of my uncle who was Vicar of Whitstable; I took them seriously, but looking back on them now, I am inclined to think that he was exercising at my expense a humour which I never suspected him of possessing
.

    Reading does not make a man wise; it only makes him learned.

    Respectability is the cloak under which fools cover their stupidity.

    No action is in itself good or bad, but only such according to convention.

    An old maid is always poor. When a spinster is rich she is an unmarried woman of a certain age.

    Genius should use mediocrity as ink wherewith to write its name in the annals of the world.
    Genius is talent provided with ideals.
    Genius starves while talent wears purple and fine linen.
    The man of genius of today will in fifty years’ time be in most cases no more than a man of talent.

    A visit to a picture gallery with a friend is, perhaps, the severest test you can put him to. Most people, on going to a gallery, leave politeness and courtesy, with their umbrellas and sticks, at the door. They step in stripped of their veneer, and display their dispositions in all their nakedness. Then you will find them dogmatic and arrogant, flippant and foolish, impatient of contradiction and even of difference of opinion. Neither do they then seek to hide their opinion of you; for the most part it is a very unfavourable one.
    The man who in these conditions listens tolerantly to your opinion and allows that you may be as right as he, is a