John Galsworthy

“ What do they know? What can they see?" and without waiting for an answer, would reply: "Nothing! Nothing. Less than nothing!" and mean it. It was at moments such as these that he realized how he not only despised but almost hated those dense and cocky Philistines who could not see his obvious superiority. He felt that he did not lightly call them by such names, because they really were dense and cocky, and no more able to see things from his point of view than they were to jump over the moon. These fellows could see nothing except from their own confounded viewpoint! ”

“ I have even gone so far of late years as to dress like them, to play their games, to eat regularly, to drink little, to love decorously, with many other bourgeois virtues, but in spite of all I remain where I was, an inhabitant of another—" and just as he thought the whispering voice was going to die away, it would add hurriedly, "and a better world." ”

“ Their conduct often struck him as almost superfluously good. They were brave; much braver than he was conscious of being; clean-thinking, oh, far more clean-thinking than a man like himself, necessarily given to visions of all kinds ”

“ THE inner workings of the artist's mind, especially the artist of the new schools, is a puzzle to the layman. This sketch of Mr. Galsworthy's is as accurate a chart as we have ever seen published
HE had long known, of course, that to say the word "bourgeois" with contempt was a little bit old-fashioned, and he did his utmost not to; yet was there a still small voice within him that would whisper: "Those people—I want to and I do treat them as my equals. ”

“ In feeling damnation lies." And nothing gave him greater uneasiness than to find the emotions of anger, scorn, love, reverence, or pity surging within him as he worked, for he knew that they would, if he did not at once master them, spoil a certain splendid vacuity that he demanded of all Art. ”

“ AS can be well imagined, his conviction of being, in a small way, God, permeated an outlook that was passionless and impartial to a degree—except perhaps toward the bourgeoisie, with their tiring morals, and peculiar habits. ”