357 Quotes by Elizabeth Bowen

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.

Reason can never reconcile one to life: nothing allays the wants one cannot explain.

Look, let's see ourselves in the distance, then we shall think, how happy they are! We're young; this is spring; this is a wood. In some sort of way or other we love each other, and our lives are before us—God pity us! Do you hear the birds?

Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.

Frantic smiles at parties, overtures that have desperation behind them, miasmic reaches of talk with the lost bore, short cuts to approach through staring, squeezing or kissing all indicate that one cannot live alone. Not only is there no question of solitude, but in the long run we may not choose our company.

Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone her pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude.

While I stand and regard it, the indifference to myself shown by a work of art in itself is art.

Livvy noted there seemed some communal feeling between the married: any wife could be faintly rude to anyone else's husband.

He said he judged people by their characters. I said was that always a quite good way of judging, as people's characters get so different at times, as it depends so much what happens to them.