Elizabeth Bowen quotes

Elizabeth Bowen was an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer renowned for her piercing psychological insight. Her works explore themes of war, displacement, and the complexities of human relationships. She is considered one of the most important writers of twentieth-century English literature. Here are 59 of her quotes:

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat. (Elizabeth Bowen)
Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
When you love someone all your saved up wishes start coming out. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Intimacies between women go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending up in small talk without loss of esteem. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
We are minor in everything but our passions. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Nobody speaks the truth when there is something they must have. (Elizabeth Bowen)
No object is mysterious. The mystery is in your eyes. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
And yet in a way I would rather fail point blank. Things one can do have no value. I don't mind feeling small myself, but I dread finding the world is. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
"What's the matter with this country is the matter with the lot of us individually- our sense of personality is a sense of outrage and we'll never get outside of it."But the hold of the country was that, she considered, it could be thought of in terms of oneself, so interpreted. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet - when they do meet, their victims lie strewn all round. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
I think the main thing, don't you, is to keep the show on the road. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
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. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Language is a mixture of statement and evocation. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets. (Elizabeth Bowen)
One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Art is one thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
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. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
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. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen

Elizabeth Bowen

Elizabeth Bowen - Image
Photo: Unknown photographer, CC BY 4.0
Occupation: Anglo-Irish Novelist
Born: June 7, 1899
Died: February 22, 1973
Quotes count: 59
Wikipedia: Elizabeth Bowen

Related authors

John Banville - thumbnail
John Banville  131 
Irish Novelist
Quentin Blake  9 
English Cartoonist
William Trevor  7 
Irish Writer
Edna O'Brien - thumbnail
Edna O'Brien  47 
Irish Novelist
Sean O'Faolain - thumbnail
Sean O'Faolain  2 
Irish Writer
Rose Macaulay  8 
English Novelist
Ivy Compton-Burnett  18 
English Novelist
Katherine Mansfield  56 
New Zealander Author
Flann O'Brien  32 
Irish Writer
E. M. Forster - thumbnail
E. M. Forster  285 
English Novelist