'Each hour offers new opportunities'

 

“The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your life.  You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.“ – Arnold Bennett

 

Bennett was born in England in May of 1867 and was a newspaper editor who started writing a weekly column after being perplexed by the lack of good material from his other writers.  He quickly discovered he had a great knack for it and by 1900 was devoting all of his time to writing.

 

Besides his column, which eventually appeared in hundreds of newspapers, Bennett wrote 34 novels, 7 volumes of short stories, 13 plays, and a daily journal.  He also wrote for the cinema in the 1920s and was the most financially successful British author of his day.  His novel The Old Wives' Tale -- following the lives of two sisters from youth through old age -- is considered one of the 20^th century’s greatest works of English literature. 

 

Also a much sought-after reviewer, he was acclaimed as a “discoverer” of other great writers.  He unerringly picked out many of the most important writers of the next generation, including James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.   And Bennett wrote two dozen nonfiction books, including 8 “self-help” books.  His popular How to Live on 24 Hours a Day is still a regular reference work in the self-help field.

 

“The best cure for worry, depression, melancholy and brooding,” he said, “is to go deliberately forth and try to lift with one's sympathy the gloom of somebody else.”