Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

Most popular Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

Dogs are a habit, I think. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
Dogs are a habit, I think.
— Elizabeth Bowen Joining Charles

dogs

Life is a succession of readjustments. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
Life is a succession of readjustments.
— Elizabeth Bowen To the North

life

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.
— Elizabeth Bowen Elizabeth Bowen

fate

Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.
— Elizabeth Bowen The House in Paris

silence

One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.
— Elizabeth Bowen The Heat of the Day

understanding ideas

Someone soon to start on a journey is always a little holy. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
Someone soon to start on a journey is always a little holy.
— Elizabeth Bowen This House in Paris

journeys

Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.
— Elizabeth Bowen The House in Paris

jealousy

When you love someone all your saved up wishes start coming out. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
When you love someone all your saved up wishes start coming out.
— Elizabeth Bowen
Art is the only thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
Art is the only thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting.
— Elizabeth Bowen The Heat of the Day

art

Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.
— Elizabeth Bowen The Death of the Heart

narcissist

The passion of vanity has its own depths in the spirit, and is powerfully militant. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
The passion of vanity has its own depths in the spirit, and is powerfully militant.
— Elizabeth Bowen Look at All Those Roses

vanity

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out.
— Elizabeth Bowen The Death of the Heart

absence

Habit, of which passion must be wary, may all the same be the sweetest part of love. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
Habit, of which passion must be wary, may all the same be the sweetest part of love.
— Elizabeth Bowen
Good general-purpose manners nowadays may be said to consist in knowing how much you can get away with. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
Good general-purpose manners nowadays may be said to consist in knowing how much you can get away with.
— Elizabeth Bowen Collected Impressions

manners

Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates its own objects: is this not true of fear? - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates its own objects: is this not true of fear?
— Elizabeth Bowen Collected Impressions

fear

Experience isn't interesting till it begins to repeat itself—in fact, till it does that it hardly is experience. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
Experience isn't interesting till it begins to repeat itself—in fact, till it does that it hardly is experience.
— Elizabeth Bowen The Death of the Heart

experience

Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk without loss of esteem. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk without loss of esteem.
— Elizabeth Bowen The Death of the Heart

intimacy

All your youth, you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
All your youth, you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.
— Elizabeth Bowen The House in Paris

greatness

The finer the nature, and the higher the level at which it seeks to live, the lower in grief it not only sinks but dives. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
The finer the nature, and the higher the level at which it seeks to live, the lower in grief it not only sinks but dives.
— Elizabeth Bowen The Death of the Heart

sorrow

The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.
— Elizabeth Bowen Vogue

memory

For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal.  Expectations are the most perilous form of dream, and when dreams do realize themselves it is in the waking world: the difference is subtly but often painfully felt. - Elizabeth Bowen quote.
For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal.  Expectations are the most perilous form of dream, and when dreams do realize themselves it is in the waking world: the difference is subtly but often painfully felt.
— Elizabeth Bowen The Death of the Heart

expectation

When you love someone all your saved-up wishes start coming out.
— Elizabeth Bowen The Death of the Heart

wish love