“Darling, I don't want you; I've got no place for you; I only want what you give. I don't want the whole of anyone.... What you want is the whole of me-isn't it, isn't it?-and the whole of me isn't there for anybody. In that full sense you want me I don't exist.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“A romantic man often feels more uplifted with two women than with one: his love seems to hit the ideal mark somewhere between two different faces.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“She walked about with the rather fated expression you see in photographs of girls who have subsequently been murdered, but nothing had so far happened to her.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet-when they do meet, their victims lie strewn all round.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“One's sentiments -- call them that -- one's fidelities are so instinctive that one hardly knows they exist: only when they are betrayed or, worse still, when one betrays them does one realize their power.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“It is not our exalted feelings, it is our sentiments that build the necessary home. The need to attach themselves makes wandering people strike roots in a day: wherever we unconsciously feel, we live.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“The happy passive nature, locked up with itself like a mirror in an airy room, reflects what goes on but demands not to be approached.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“Some people are moulded by their aspirations, others by their hostilities.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“Darling, I don’t want you; I’ve got no place for you; I only want what you give. I don’t want the whole of anyone…What you want is the whole of me — isn't it, isn't it? — and the whole of me isn't there for anybody. In that full sense you want me I don’t exist.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“She posed as being more indolent than she felt, for fear of finding herself less able than she could wish.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“Looking back at a repetition of empty days, one sees that monuments have sprung up. Habit is not mere subjugation, it is a tender tie: when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“Makes of men date, like makes of cars...”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“The furniture would have missed you?
Furniture's knowing all right. Not much gets past the things in a room, I daresay, and chairs and tables don't go to the grave so soon. Every time I take the soft cloth to that stuff in the drawingroom, I could say, 'Well, you know a bit more'.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“The belt slid down her thin hips, and she nervously gripped at it, pulling it up. Short sleeves showed her very thin arms and big delicate elbow joints. Her body was all concave and jerkily fluid lines; it moved with sensitive looseness, loosely threaded together: each movement had a touch of exaggeration , as though some secret power kept springing out.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“But there's no end to what's been said, and I'll be a party to nothing. I was born with my mouth shut:those with their mouths open do nothing but start trouble and catch flies.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“After inside upheavals, it is important to fix on imperturbable things. Their imperturbableness, their air that nothing has happened renews our guarantee. Pictures would not be hung plumb over the centres of fireplaces or wallpapers pasted on with such precision that their seams make no break in the pattern if life were really not possible to adjudicate for. These things are what we mean when we speak of civilization: they remind us how exceedingly seldom the unseemly or unforeseeable rears its head. In this sense, the destruction of buildings and furniture is more palpably dreadful to the spirit than the destruction of human life.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“It seemed to her that while people were very happy, individual persons were surely damned. So, she shrank from that specious mystery the individual throws about himself, from Anna's smiles, from Lilian's tomorrows, from the shut-in room, the turned-in heart.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“Are you really an orphan?
Yes, I am, said Portia a shade shortly. Are you?
No, not at present, but I suppose it's a thing one is bound to be.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“Innocence so constantly finds itself in a false position that inwardly innocent people learn to be disingenuous. Finding no language to speak in their own terms they resign themselves to being translated imperfectly. They exist alone; when they try and enter into relations they compromise falsifyingly- through anxiety, through desire to impart and to feel warmth. The system of our affections is too corrupt for them. They are bound to blunder, then to be told they cheat...Their singleness, their ruthlessness, their one continuous wish makes them bound to be cruel, and to suffer cruelty.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“Sacrificers,” said Matchett, “are not the ones to pity. The ones to pity are those that they sacrifice”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“The most we can hope is to go on getting away with it till the others get it away from us”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“the senses bound our feeling world: there is an abrupt break where their power stops”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“We desert those who desert us; we cannot afford to suffer; we must live how we can”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realisation is something of an ordeal. Expectations are the most perilous form of dream, and when dreams do realise themselves it is in the waking world: the difference is subtly but often painfully felt”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“Did Anna also, sometimes not know what to do next? Because she knew what to do next, because she knew what to laugh at, what to say, did it always follow that she knew where to turn? Inside everyone, is there an anxious person who stands to hesitate in an empty room?”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“In a library in a staid South Coast resort of retirees ”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“Some of my ideas get enlarged almost before I have them.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
“The happy passive nature, locked up with itself like a mirror in an airy room, reflects what goes on but demands not to be approached. A pact with life, a pact of immunity, appears to exist-But this pact is not respected for ever- a street accident, an overheard quarrel, a certain note in a voice, a face coming too close, a tree being blown down, someone's unjust fate- the peace tears right across.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart
Elizabeth Bowen
Born place: in Dublin, Ireland
Born date June 7, 1899
See more on GoodReads
“What is the scholar, what is the man for, but for hospitality to every new thought of his time? Have you leisure, power, property, friends? you shall be the asylum and patron of every new thought, every unproven opinion, every untried project, which proceeds out of good will and honest seeking. All the newspapers, all the tongues of to-day will of course at first defame what is noble; but you who hold not of to-day, not of the times, but of the Everlasting, are to stand for it: and the highest compliment, man ever receives from heaven, is the sending to him its disguised and discredited angels.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from Nature and Selected Essays
“Ezio considered the new century they were in - the sixteenth. And only near its beginning. What would unfold during it, he could only guess; he knew that, at his age, he would not see very much more of it. More discoveries, and more wars, no doubt. But essentially the same play repeating itself - and the same actors, only with different costumes and different props for each generation that swallows up the last, each thinking that it would be the one to do better.”
― Oliver Bowden, quote from Assassin's Creed: Revelations
“西伦敦大学毕业证成绩单+真实教育部认证微信150088573办理英国西伦敦大学毕业证成绩单回国人员证明 University of West London西伦敦大学毕业证成绩单+真实教育部认证微信150088573办理英国西伦敦大学毕业证成绩单回国人员证明 University of West London西伦敦大学毕业证成绩单+真实教育部认证微信150088573办理英国西伦敦大学毕业证成绩单回国人员证明 University of West London西伦敦大学毕业证成绩单+真实教育部认证微信150088573办理英国西伦敦大学毕业证成绩单回国人员证明 University of West London西伦敦大学毕业证成绩单+真实教育部认证微信150088573办理英国西伦敦大学毕业证成绩单回国人员证明 University of West London西伦敦大学毕业证成绩单+真实教育部认证微信150088573办理英国西伦敦大学毕业证成绩单回国人员证明 University of West London”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from The Way Life Should Be
“Kara didn't feel like a dial and go coke pusher but she was a supremely good hustler”
― Saira Viola, quote from Crack Apple And Pop!
“When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an ‘idol,’ something you are actually worshiping. When such a thing is threatened, your anger is absolute. Your anger is actually the way the idol keeps you in its service, in its chains. Therefore if you find that, despite all the efforts to forgive, your anger and bitterness cannot subside, you may need to look deeper and ask, ‘What am I defending? What is so important that I cannot live without?’ It may be that, until some inordinate desire is identified and confronted, you will not be able to master your anger.”
― Timothy J. Keller, quote from Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters
Divide & Conquer
Taliesin
The Untethered Soul:...
Persephone
Between the Lives
SlideBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
