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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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A person who can really be called an unselfish person, has no place in life.
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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[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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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
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What concerns anyone so much as the time he has to live?
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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We must use words as they are used, or stand aside from life.
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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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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It is better to be drunk with loss and to beat the ground, than to let the deeper things gradually escape.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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A leopard does not change his spots, or change his feeling that spots are rather a credit.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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Parents have too little respect for their children, just as the children have too much for the parents.
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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If I were not a child with my parents, they would be more unloving toward me.
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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some people always have a touch of youth about them.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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The most original novelist now writing in English.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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There is more difference within the sexes than between them.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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A plot is like the bones of a person, not interesting like expression, or signs of experience, but the support of the whole.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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Many people misjudge the permanent effect of sorrow, and their capacity to live in the past.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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The plot is not very important to me, though a novel must have one, of course. It's just a line to hang the washing on.
Ivy Compton-Burnett