Ivy Compton-Burnett Quotes

53 Sourced Quotes

A leopard does not change his spots, or change his feeling that spots are rather a credit.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
"Time has too much credit," said Bridget. "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."

Ivy Compton-Burnett
There is probably nothing like living together for blinding people to each other.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
At a certain point my novels set. They set just as hard as that jam jar. And then I know they are finished.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
My youth is escaping without giving me anything it owes me.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
We none of us talk to people as we do behind their backs.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
"Well, of course, people are only human," said Dudley to his brother, as they walked to the house behind the women. "But it really does not seem much for them to be."

Ivy Compton-Burnett
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!

Ivy Compton-Burnett
There is danger in courage. Cowardice is a power for good. We hardly know what it prevents.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
We do not discuss the members of our family to their faces...

Ivy Compton-Burnett
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.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
Some people always have a touch of youth about them.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
Parents have too little respect for their children, just as the children have too much for the parents.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
There are different kinds of wrong. The people sinned against are not always the best.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
Truth is so impossible. Something has to be done for it.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
We must use words as they are used, or stand aside from life.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
Anyone who picks up a Compton-Burnett finds it very hard not to put it down.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
'I should not like Aubrey to die,' said Dudley. 'I only nearly died, and it would give him the immediate advantage.'

Ivy Compton-Burnett
Most of the pleasure of making a book would go if it held nothing to be shared by other people. I would write for a few dozen people, and sometimes it seems that I do so, but I would not write for no-one.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
We can build upon foundations anywhere if they are well and firmly laid.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
"Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth," said his cousin. "But we seem to have no other."

Ivy Compton-Burnett
My point is that it [wickedness] is not punished, and that is why it is natural to be guilty of it. When it is likely to be punished, most of us avoid it.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
I wonder the human race has been so fond of migrations, when the young take so hardly to traveling.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
Being cruel to be kind is just ordinary cruelty with an excuse made for it…And it is right that it should be more resented, as it is.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
It is in our minds that we live much of our life.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
Dear, dear, the miniature world of the family! All the emotions of mankind seem to find a place in it.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
A person who can really be called an unselfish person, has no place in life.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
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?

Ivy Compton-Burnett
People don't resent having nothing nearly as much as too little.

Ivy Compton-Burnett
People's weaker side is not necessarily their truer self.

Ivy Compton-Burnett