Absence Quote by Elizabeth Bowen

“The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. The friend becomes a traitor by breaking, however unwillingly or sadly, out of our own zone: a hard judgment is passed on him, for all the pleas of the heart.”

Elizabeth Bowen

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.1 out of 5 (10 ratings)

Absence Absent Absent friends Friendship Heart Judgment May People Thinking Traitor Zone

More by Elizabeth Bowen

Temperamentally, the writer exists on happenings, on contacts, conflicts, action and reaction, speed, pressure, tension. Were he acontemplative purely, he would not write.

Elizabeth Bowen

Image

“Are you really an orphan? Yes, I am, said Portia a shade shortly. Are you? No, not at present, but I suppose it's a…

Elizabeth Bowen

Image

It is not our exalted feelings, it is our sentiments that build the necessary home.

Elizabeth Bowen

Image

Every love has a poetic relevance of its own; each love brings to light only what to it is relevant. Outside lies the junk-yard…

Elizabeth Bowen

Image

without fiction, either life would be insufficient or the winds from the north would blow too cold.

Elizabeth Bowen

Image

One's sentiments -- call them that -- one's fidelities are so instinctive that one hardly knows they exist: only when they are betrayed or,…

Elizabeth Bowen

Image

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…

Elizabeth Bowen

Image

To walk into history is to be free at once, to be at large among people.

Elizabeth Bowen

Image

The wish to lead out one's lover must be a tribal feeling; the wish to be seen as loved is part of one's self-respect.

Elizabeth Bowen

Image

Convention was our safeguard: could one have stronger?

Elizabeth Bowen

Image

“First love, with its frantic haughty imagination, swings its object clear of the everyday, over the rut of living, making him all looks, silences,…

Elizabeth Bowen

Image

to leap is not only to leap, it is to hit the ground somewhere.

Elizabeth Bowen

Image

Explore all 275 Elizabeth Bowen quotes

More Absence quotes

Distance sometimes endears friendship, and absence sweeteneth it.

James Howell

Image

The work, the work, the work. This is what the business is all about. This is the fun, the glory, the pleasure. It's the…

Phil Dusenberry

Image

Total depravity means the entire absence of holiness, not the highest intensity of sin. A totally depraved man is not as bad as he…

William Greenough Thayer Shedd

Image

Local and state governments have outrun the federal government. The EPA has served notice that it will enact a rule requiring CO2 reductions by…

Al Gore

Image

There, in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had…

Toni Morrison

Image

Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.

Willa Cather

Image

Young men have strong passions and tend to gratify them indiscriminately. Of the bodily desires, it is the sexual by which they are most…

Aristotle

Image

It is suggested that in domestic violence at least the presence or absence of a firearm, or of any other type of weapon, is…

Colin Greenwood

Image

The absence of God in most spheres of life is perceived to be normal, and even Christians feel it as normal - which is…

John Piper

Image

Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and…

Maya Angelou

Image

“I was thinking how most people don't make you feel much of anything at all. Don't make you feel like time spent with them…

Jane Lotter

Image

Cooperation isn't the absence of conflict but a means of managing conflict.

Deborah Tannen

Image

Browse all 1,896 Absence quotes

Absence Quote by Elizabeth Bowen

Related quotes

More by Elizabeth Bowen

More Absence quotes