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Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One's relation to them, the daily seeing or touching, begins to become love, and to lay one open to pain.

— Elizabeth Bowen The Death of the Heart (1939)

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Alone

More quotes by Elizabeth Bowen

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We have really no absent friends.

The Death of the Heart (1939)

It is thought that women inspire by their beauty; more often they do so by their longings.

A Time in Rome (1960)

Intimacies between women go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending up in small talk without loss of esteem.

The Death of the Heart (1939)

Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself — in fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.

The Death of the Heart (1939)

There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.

The House in Paris (1935)

All Elizabeth Bowen quotes →

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When, musing on companions gone,
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There's a natural law of karma that vindictive people, who go out of their way to hurt others, will end up broke and alone.

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I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

Albert Einstein

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Elizabeth Bowen (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.