Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

Autumn arrives in the early morning but spring at the close of a winter's day.

I swear that each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant - impossible so...

Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone:...

When you love someone all your saved up wishes start coming out.

He specialized in a particular kind of friendship with that eight-limbed, inscrutable, treacherous c...

Livvy noted there seemed some communal feeling between the married: any wife could be faintly rude t...

When you love someone all your saved-up wishes start coming out.

One's sentiments -- call them that -- one's fidelities are so instinctive that one hardly knows they...

With three or more people there is something bold in the air: direct things get said which would fri...

And because no one answered or cared and a conversation went on without her she felt profoundly lone...

In big houses in which things are done properly there is always the religious element. The diurnal ...

Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk.

Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone.

Experience isn't interesting till it begins to repeat itself-in fact till it does that it hardly i...

Silences have a climax when you have got to speak.

Who ever is adequate? We all create situations which others can't live up to then break our hearts ...

Nobody speaks the truth when there is something they must have.

Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.

One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.

A romantic man often feels more uplifted with two women than with one: his love seems to hit the ide...

Some people are molded by their admirations others by their hostilities.

Art is one thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting.

Habit is not mere subjugation it is a tender tie when one remembers habit it seems to have been ha...

No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.

The way one is envisaged by other people - what easier way is there of envisaging oneself? There is ...

If they should only be ill,' she said, 'there would be so many little things we could do for them. I...

Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone her pleasure in being alone:...

She posed as being more indolent than she felt, for fear of finding herself less able than she could...

Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.

Darling, I don't want you; I've got no place for you; I only want what you give. I don't want the wh...

For people who live on expectations to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal.

If you look at life one way there is always cause for alarm.

Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates it's own objects: is this not also tr...

Each of us keeps battened down inside himself a sort of lunatic giant -impossible socially but fu...

All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted when you find it taken for granted...