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Ivy Compton-Burnett Quotes

English author (b. 1884), Death: 27-8-1969 Ivy Compton-Burnett Quotes
1.
A leopard does not change his spots, or change his feeling that spots are rather a credit.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

2.
Anyone who picks up a Compton-Burnett finds it very hard not to put it down.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

3.
There are different kinds of wrong. The people sinned against are not always the best.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

4.
My youth is escaping without giving me anything it owes me.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

5.
We can build upon foundations anywhere if they are well and firmly laid.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

Similar Authors: Charles Spurgeon Stephen King Winston Churchill Richelle Mead Jodi Picoult Francois de La Rochefoucauld Marianne Williamson Wayne Dyer Michel de Montaigne Suzanne Collins Leo Tolstoy Stephenie Meyer Jim Rohn Oswald Chambers Zig Ziglar
6.
As regards plot I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots. And as I think a plot desirable and almost necessary, I have this extra grudge against life.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

7.
Real life seems to have no plots.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

8.
I never know why self-sacrifice is noble. Why is it better to sacrifice oneself than someone else?
Ivy Compton-Burnett

Quote Topics by Ivy Compton-Burnett: People Writing Real Thinking Doe Plot Children Mind Family Youth Book Wells Should Long Feelings Loss Parent Giving Use Would Be Self Way Grateful Kind Jam Drunk Littles Sacrifice Differences Mother
9.
Many people misjudge the permanent effect of sorrow, and their capacity to live in the past.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

10.
I never agree with the compliments paid to it. It is not a great healer. It is an indifferent and perfunctory one. Sometimes it does not heal at all. And sometimes when it seems to, no healing has been necessary.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

11.
I wonder the human race has been so fond of migrations, when the young take so hardly to traveling.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

12.
Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth,' said his cousin. 'But we seem to have no other.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

13.
A plot is like the bones of a person, not interesting like expression, or signs of experience, but the support of the whole.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

14.
Pushing forty? She's hanging on for dear life.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

15.
A person who can really be called an unselfish person, has no place in life.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

16.
At a certain point my novels set. They set just as hard as that jam jar. And then I know they are finished.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

17.
There is danger in courage. Cowardice is a power for good. We hardly know what it prevents.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

18.
The most original novelist now writing in English.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

19.
There is more difference within the sexes than between them.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

20.
People who have power respond simply. They have no minds but their own.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

21.
When I die, people will say it is the best thing for me. It is because they know it is the worst. They want to avoid the feeling of pity. As though they were the people most concerned!
Ivy Compton-Burnett

22.
I am ill at ease with people whose lives are an open book.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

23.
Dear, dear, the miniature world of the family! All the emotions of mankind seem to find a place in it.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

24.
There is probably nothing like living together for blinding people to each other.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

25.
There isn't much to say. I haven't been at all deedy.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

26.
People's weaker side is not necessarily their truer self.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

27.
We do not discuss the members of our family to their faces.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

28.
Never is a long word.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

29.
Real charity and real ability never to condemn-the one real virtue-is so often the result of a waking experience that gives a glimpse of what lies beneath things.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

30.
We are always children to our mothers.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

31.
The plot is not very important to me, though a novel must have one, of course. It's just a line to hang the washing on.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

32.
You should not want to know the things in people's minds. If you were meant to hear them, they would be said.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

33.
I think I feel on the whole that something's there trying to get out ... It's sort of trying to get out and wants help.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

34.
People have never lost what they think they have.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

35.
Well, of course, people are only human... But it really does not seem much for them to be.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

36.
Civilized life exacts its toll.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

37.
To young people the future is still long.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

38.
It is no good to think that other people are out to serve our interests.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

39.
Our desires have a way of getting bigger with our incomes.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

40.
It is better to be drunk with loss and to beat the ground, than to let the deeper things gradually escape.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

41.
Ah, we have to be generous to be grateful ... One has oneself to be a giver.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

42.
Most of the pleasure of making a book would go if it held nothing to be shared by other people. I would write for a few dozen people, and sometimes it seems that I do so, but I would not write for no-one.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

43.
Well, Buttermere, this is a day that is good to live and breathe in, that makes a man feel in his prime. Standing here in front of my house, I feel as young as when I moved into it thirty years ago, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine. What aged man would you take me to be, as I step as it were casually into your view?
Ivy Compton-Burnett

44.
Truth is so impossible. Something has to be done for it.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

45.
It is not for us to hold ourselves above the position of grateful people. We have to be able to accept. Anything else shows an unwillingness to grant someone else the superior place.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

46.
If I were not a child with my parents, they would be more unloving toward me.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

47.
What concerns anyone so much as the time he has to live?
Ivy Compton-Burnett

48.
charm should be on the surface. It has no hidden use.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

49.
Duty is seldom liked either by the doer or the object ... And why should it be? It is not often of advantage to either.
Ivy Compton-Burnett

50.
Parents have too little respect for their children, just as the children have too much for the parents.
Ivy Compton-Burnett