A Quote by Ivy Compton-Burnett

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

Ivy Compton-Burnett

Quote Topics

Course Does Human Much Only People Really Seem Them Well

Quote Author

Ivy Compton-Burnett
English - Novelist
June 5, 1884 - August 27, 1969

Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.

Kurt Vonnegut

If a woman writes about herself, she’s a narcissist. If a man does the same, he’s describing the human condition. But people seem to evaluate your work based on how much they relate to it, so it’s like, well, who’s the narcissist?

Emily Gould

My personality does well with people who are deemed difficult. I don't know why it does but I just seem to get along with them. The more difficult the better.

Nicole Kidman

The one function that most gods seem to have in common is to give human existence some ultimate purpose - and, while it is not possible to disprove an ultimate purpose, there does not seem to be any evidence for it. This is not to say, of course, that there is no purpose in life at all: we all make our own purposes as we go through life. And life does not lose its value simply because it it not going to last forever.

Barbara Smoker

The problem in America as far as actors are concerned - and it's probably true in other fields, as well - is that they don't value people who are older or talented. I don't think ability means anything. How much money you have or how much money you can make for them are the only things they seem to care about or understand.

Lauren Bacall

They're constants, aren't they?" ... "Books are. That's why we like them so much. They seem immutable. They're not, of course. Not from the author's first draft to the tenth printing, but they seem like it.

C.E. Murphy

People either hate my paintings or they love them. There does not seem to be much middle ground.

Margaret Keane

Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.

Woody Allen

I thought about how odd it is for billions of people to be alive, yet not one of them is really quite sure of what makes people people. The only activities I could think of that humans do that have no animal equivalent were smoking, body-building and writing. That's not much, considering how special we seem to think we are.

Douglas Coupland

Well, farmers never have made money. I don't believe we can do much about it. But of course we will have to seem to be doing something; do the best we can and without much hope. The life of the farmer has its compensations but it has always been one of hardship.

Calvin Coolidge

Even if people aren't Republicans, it doesn't seem shocking to them that Ronald Reagan was the president. Well of course, because Arnold Schwarzenegger was the governor! This is not only a bar too low, this is no bar at all. I don't care who you are, you know 20 people smarter than Ronald Reagan. You know 20 people who would be a better president than Ronald Reagan.

Fran Lebowitz

I spoke to my father - my father's from Pakistan and he's also a lawyer - I said to him, "Well what does the Shari'a say?" And he said, "Well, of course it doesn't justify suicide bombs," but he didn't seem to know where the Shari'a came from or what it was all about. The more I asked people in my family as well as friends, the more I realized that there seemed to be widespread ignorance in the Muslim community. And that's something which I actually found to be the case over the next two and a half, three years I spent writing the book.

Sadakat Kadri

He does much who loves God much, and he does much who does his deed well, and he does his deed well who does it rather for the common good than for his own will.

Thomas a Kempis

Sometimes I wonder if people really want my smelly old shoes, but some people seem quite thrilled by them. So I'm like, OK, well, this is something you can't buy, so there you go.