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charm should be on the surface. It has no hidden use.

Ivy Compton-Burnett

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Ivy Compton-Burnett
Age: 85 †
Born: 1884
Born: June 5
Died: 1969
Died: August 27
Novelist
Writer
London
England
I. Compton-Burnett
Use
Charm
Hidden
Surface

More quotes by Ivy Compton-Burnett

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My youth is escaping without giving me anything it owes me.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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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
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There are different kinds of wrong. The people sinned against are not always the best.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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People have never lost what they think they have.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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We none of us talk to people as we do behind their backs.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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People's weaker side is not necessarily their truer self.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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[On writing:] What a difficult kind of work to choose! But of course one did not choose it. There was no choice.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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We do not discuss the members of our family to their faces.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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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
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it is in our minds that we live much of our life.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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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.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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There is probably nothing like living together for blinding people to each other.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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Our desires have a way of getting bigger with our incomes.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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If I were not a child with my parents, they would be more unloving toward me.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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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.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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People who have power respond simply. They have no minds but their own.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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It is no good to think that other people are out to serve our interests.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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There is more difference within the sexes than between them.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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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
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We can build upon foundations anywhere if they are well and firmly laid.
Ivy Compton-Burnett