Elizabeth Bowen - Live Quotes

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The Irish landowner, partly from laziness but also from an indifferent delicacy, does not interfere in the lives of the people round. Sport and death are the two great socializing factors in Ireland, but these cannot operate the whole time: on the whole, the landowner leaves his tenants and work-people to make their own mistakes, while he makes his.

Elizabeth Bowen

For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal. Expectations are the most perilous form of dream, and when dreams do realize themselves it is in the waking world: the difference is subtly but often painfully felt.

Elizabeth Bowen

The child lives in the book; but just as much the book lives in the child.

Elizabeth Bowen

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

Elizabeth Bowen

We desert those who desert us; we cannot afford to suffer; we must live how we can.

Elizabeth Bowen

Let's face it — who ever is adequate? We all create situations each other can't live up to, then break our hearts at them because they don't.

Elizabeth Bowen

The finer the nature, and the higher the level at which it seeks to live, the lower in grief it not only sinks but dives.

Elizabeth Bowen

One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.

Elizabeth Bowen