The Good Quote
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Home
Authors
Elizabeth Bowen
Irish
Novelist
About the author
Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Life
Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Hope
#Pity
#Selfishness
One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Idea
#Shadow
That is partly why women marry - to keep up the fiction of being in the hub of things.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Being
#Women
#Fiction
Nobody speaks the truth when there is something they must have.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Truth
The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet - when they do meet, their victims lie strewn all round.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Lie
#Victims
No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Eye
#Mystery
Nothing can happen nowhere. The locale of the happening always colours the happening, and often, to a degree, shapes it.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Nothing
The best that an individual can do is to concentrate on what he or she can do, in the course of a burning effort to do it better.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Effort
The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#People
#Heart
#May
#Friends
#Senses
#Absence
Who is ever adequate? We all create situations each other can't live up to, then break our hearts at them because they don't.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Lie
The wish to lead out one's lover must be a tribal feeling; the wish to be seen as loved is part of one's self-respect.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Feeling
#Self
There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Children
#End
#Talking
We are minor in everything but our passions.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
When you love someone all your saved up wishes start coming out.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Love
#Wishes
Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Experience
#Fact
The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#First
#Writing
#Writer
#Value
#Importance
Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#World
#War
#Fantasy
#Cruelty
#World war
Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Fate
All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Want
#Youth
#Greatness
Art is one thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Art
Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#People
#Idea
#Meeting
Education is not so important as people think.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#People
#Education
I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
I think the main thing, don't you, is to keep the show on the road.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Road
If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Idea
Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Thought
#Language
#Difficulties
Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Art
#Feeling
Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Talk
#Ending
#Women
#Beginning
Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Day
#Winter
#Spring
#Autumn
Ireland is a great country to die or be married in.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Country
#Ireland
It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Friend
#Help
Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Feeling
#Enemies
#Jealousy
Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Language
If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm.
Elizabeth Bowen,
Irish
Novelist
#Life
#Cause