Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

Quote

We are minor in everything but our passions.
Elizabeth Bowen

Passions, Minor

Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.
Elizabeth Bowen

Jealousy, Alone, Feeling

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

Love, Someone, Start

Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.
Elizabeth Bowen

Life, While, Nobody

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

Morning, Spring, Winter

The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.
Elizabeth Bowen

Writing, Value, Writer

Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.
Elizabeth Bowen

War, Brain, Start

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

Fate, Eagle, Rat

If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.
Elizabeth Bowen

Idea, Simply, Novel

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

Art, Hurting, Once

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

Life, Cause, Alarm

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do.
Elizabeth Bowen

Art, Live, Feeling

Ireland is a great country to die or be married in.
Elizabeth Bowen

Great, Country, Die

Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.
Elizabeth Bowen

Thought, Language, Mechanical

Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique.
Elizabeth Bowen

Idea, Unique, Meeting

No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.
Elizabeth Bowen

Eye, Mystery, Mysterious

Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.
Elizabeth Bowen

Speak, Climax, Silences

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
Elizabeth Bowen

Heart, May, Friends

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

Best, She, Effort

All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.
Elizabeth Bowen

Find, Youth, Greatness

Education is not so important as people think.
Elizabeth Bowen

Education, Important

Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.
Elizabeth Bowen

Experience, Fact, Until

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

Cannot, Close, Director

I think the main thing, don't you, is to keep the show on the road.
Elizabeth Bowen

Keep, Show, Road

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

Women, Small, Talk

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Biography

Nationality: Irish

Born: June 7, 1899

Died: February 22, 1973

Links

Find on Amazon: Elizabeth Bowen

Cite this Page: Citation

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