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You should not want to know the things in people's minds. If you were meant to hear them, they would be said.

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
Mind
Things
Would
People
Privacy
Meant
Minds
Hear

More quotes by Ivy Compton-Burnett

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There is more difference within the sexes than between them.
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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What concerns anyone so much as the time he has to live?
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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it is in our minds that we live much of our 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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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
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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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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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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 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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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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We must use words as they are used, or stand aside from life.
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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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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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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There are different kinds of wrong. The people sinned against are not always the best.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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To young people the future is still long.
Ivy Compton-Burnett