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... artists were intended to be an ornament to society. As a society in themselves they are unthinkable.

Elizabeth Bowen

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Elizabeth Bowen
Age: 73 †
Born: 1899
Born: June 7
Died: 1973
Died: February 22
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Dublin city
Elisabeth Bowen
Artists
Society
Artist
Ornament
Ornaments
Unthinkable
Intended

More quotes by Elizabeth Bowen

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rudeness to Mrs. Dosely was like dropping a pat of butter on to a hot plate - it slid and melted away.
Elizabeth Bowen
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Certain books come to meet me, as do people.
Elizabeth Bowen
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... into the novel goes such taste as I have for rational behaviour and social portraiture. The short story, as I see it to be, allows for what is crazy about humanity: obstinacies, inordinate heroisms, immortal longings.
Elizabeth Bowen
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With three or more people there is something bold in the air: direct things get said which would frighten two people alone and conscious of each inch of their nearness to one another. To be three is to be in public - you feel safe.
Elizabeth Bowen
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Though not all reading children grow up to be writers, I take it that most creative writers must in their day have been reading children.
Elizabeth Bowen
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Silence sat in the taxi, as though a stranger had got in.
Elizabeth Bowen
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Everything is very quiet, the streets are never crowded, and the people one dislikes are out of town.
Elizabeth Bowen
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The novel does not simply recount experience, it adds to experience.
Elizabeth Bowen
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life is a succession of readjustments.
Elizabeth Bowen
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Exhibitionism and a nervous wish for concealment, for anonymity, thus battle inside the buyer of any piece of clothing.
Elizabeth Bowen
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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.
Elizabeth Bowen
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The paradox of romantic love -- that what one possesses, one can no longer desire -- was at work.
Elizabeth Bowen
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Art is one thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting.
Elizabeth Bowen
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It is not our exalted feelings, it is our sentiments that build the necessary home.
Elizabeth Bowen
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Every love has a poetic relevance of its own each love brings to light only what to it is relevant. Outside lies the junk-yard of what does not matter.
Elizabeth Bowen
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Sport and death are the two great socializing factors in Ireland.
Elizabeth Bowen
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The writer, unlike his non-writing adult friend, has no predisposed outlook he seldom observes deliberately. He sees what he didnot intend to see he remembers what does not seem wholly possible. Inattentive learner in the schoolroom of life, he keeps some faculty free to veer and wander. His is the roving eye.
Elizabeth Bowen
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But in general, for the purposes of most novelists, the number of objects genuinely necessary for. . .describing a scene will be found to be very small.
Elizabeth Bowen
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Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.
Elizabeth Bowen
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Education is not so important as people think.
Elizabeth Bowen