Ivy Compton-Burnett
Time 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.
A leopard does not change his spots, or change his feeling that spots are rather a credit.
My youth is escaping without giving me anything it owes me.
There is more difference within the sexes than between them.
At a certain point my novels set. They set just as hard as that jam jar. And then I know they are finished.
There isn't much to say. I haven't been at all deedy.
Well, of course, people are only human... But it really does not seem much for them to be.
There is probably nothing like living together for blinding people to each other.
People who have power respond simply. They have no minds but their own.
There are different kinds of wrong. The people sinned against are not always the best.Collection: People
Never is a long word.Collection: Long
Magnifying a matter is not the way to mend it.Collection: Matter
it is in our minds that we live much of our life.Collection: Mind
Real life seems to have no plots.Collection: Life
A person who can really be called an unselfish person, has no place in life.Collection: Selfishness
Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth,' said his cousin. 'But we seem to have no other.Collection: Happiness
some people always have a touch of youth about them.Collection: People
I never know why self-sacrifice is noble. Why is it better to sacrifice oneself than someone else?Collection: Sacrifice
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.Collection: Real
People have never lost what they think they have.Collection: Loss
A plot is like the bones of a person, not interesting like expression, or signs of experience, but the support of the whole.Collection: Expression
Many people misjudge the permanent effect of sorrow, and their capacity to live in the past.Collection: Past
We none of us talk to people as we do behind their backs.Collection: People
We can build upon foundations anywhere if they are well and firmly laid.Collection: Foundation
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!Collection: Death
As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots.Collection: Real
You should not want to know the things in people's minds. If you were meant to hear them, they would be said.Collection: People
Civilized life exacts its toll.Collection: Tolls
I wonder the human race has been so fond of migrations, when the young take so hardly to traveling.Collection: Travel
Dear, dear, the miniature world of the family! All the emotions of mankind seem to find a place in it.Collection: Family
We do not discuss the members of our family to their faces.Collection: Family
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.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Healing
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?Collection: Book
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Grateful
Ah, we have to be generous to be grateful ... One has oneself to be a giver.Collection: Gratitude
Pushing forty? She's hanging on for dear life.Collection: Sarcastic
We are always children to our mothers.Collection: Mother
Anyone who picks up a Compton-Burnett finds it very hard not to put it down.Collection: Compton
What concerns anyone so much as the time he has to live?Collection: Concern
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.Collection: Important
People's weaker side is not necessarily their truer self.Collection: Self
[On writing:] What a difficult kind of work to choose! But of course one did not choose it. There was no choice.Collection: Writing
We must use words as they are used, or stand aside from life.Collection: Use
It will be a beautiful family talk, mean and worried and full of sorrow and spite and excitement.Collection: Family
To young people the future is still long.Collection: Long
It is no good to think that other people are out to serve our interests.Collection: Thinking
Our desires have a way of getting bigger with our incomes.Collection: Desire
It is better to be drunk with loss and to beat the ground, than to let the deeper things gradually escape.Collection: Loss