A Heritage and its History
A source page for quotes linked to Ivy Compton-Burnett.
Related Quotes
“Speaking of things robs them of half their terrors.”
Source: Manservant and maidservant
“Things only ferment and fester in the dark.”
Source: Manservant and maidservant
“We can build upon foundations anywhere if they are well and firmly laid.”
Source: Two Worlds and Their Ways
“It is no good to think that other people are out to serve our interests.”
Source: Elders and Betters
Source: Men and Wives
“some people always have a touch of youth about them.”
Source: A Family and a Fortune
“There is danger in courage. Cowardice is a power for good. We hardly know what it prevents.”
Source: The last and the first
Source: A Heritage and its History
“Magnifying a matter is not the way to mend it.”
Source: Parents and children
Source: Parents and children
“It will be a beautiful family talk, mean and worried and full of sorrow and spite and excitement.”
“We do not discuss the members of our family to their faces.”
Source: A house and its head
Source: A Heritage and its History
“Ah, we have to be generous to be grateful ... One has oneself to be a giver.”
Source: A Heritage and its History
“We none of us talk to people as we do behind their backs.”
Source: A Heritage and its History
“People have never lost what they think they have.”
Source: Parents and children
“it is in our minds that we live much of our life.”
Source: A Heritage and its History
“We are always children to our mothers.”
Source: A Heritage and its History
“I am ill at ease with people whose lives are an open book.”
Source: Parents and children
“I never know why self-sacrifice is noble. Why is it better to sacrifice oneself than someone else?”
Source: Mother and Son
“What concerns anyone so much as the time he has to live?”
Source: A Heritage and its History
“A person who can really be called an unselfish person, has no place in life.”
Source: Elders and Betters
“Many people misjudge the permanent effect of sorrow, and their capacity to live in the past.”
Source: Mother and Son
Source: Parents and children
“Truth is so impossible. Something has to be done for it.”
Source: Darkness and day
“Our desires have a way of getting bigger with our incomes.”
Source: A Family and a Fortune
“People's weaker side is not necessarily their truer self.”
Source: A Family and a Fortune
“We must use words as they are used, or stand aside from life.”
“To young people the future is still long.”
Source: A Heritage and its History
Source: A Family and a Fortune
“If I were not a child with my parents, they would be more unloving toward me.”
Source: Two Worlds and Their Ways
Source: Manservant and maidservant
“There is more difference within the sexes than between them.”
“A leopard does not change his spots, or change his feeling that spots are rather a credit.”
“Anyone who picks up a Compton-Burnett finds it very hard not to put it down.”