Ivy Compton-Burnett People Quotations

People have never lost what they think they have.

We none of us talk to people as we do behind their backs.

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!

Most of the pleasure of making a book would go if it held nothing to be shared by other people. I would write for a few dozen people, and sometimes it seems that I do so, but I would not write for no-one.

some people always have a touch of youth about them.

To young people the future is still long.

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.

People's weaker side is not necessarily their truer self.

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

Well, of course, people are only human... But it really does not seem much for them to be.

There is probably nothing like living together for blinding people to each other.

It is no good to think that other people are out to serve our interests.

I am ill at ease with people whose lives are an open book.

People who have power respond simply. They have no minds but their own.

Many people misjudge the permanent effect of sorrow, and their capacity to live in the past.

There are different kinds of wrong. The people sinned against are not always the best.