Ivy Compton-Burnett Quotes

I have almost invariably found that charm is used as a substitute for intelligence in persons of both sexes. Thus, I have always been and will remain wary of it.

A single moment spent in a business meeting or at a pub is more than enough to reveal the basic human truth that we are all faking it most of the time.

I was raised to be charming, not sincere.

Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration.

Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art.

I saw him turn his charm on and off, like water from the tap at the kitchen sink. He said nothing of substance. He seemed to me essentially an actor.

Don’t knock on any random door like a beggar. Reach your long hand out to another door, beyond where you go on the street, the street where everyone says, "How are you?" and no one says How aren’t you?

The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.

You know, people seldom go to the trouble of scratching the surface of things to find the inner truth.

beware the Lure of a handsome Face, the all too ready Assumption that the lovely Fa&#231ade must needs have lovely Chambers within; for as 'tis with Great Houses, so, too, with Great Men.

And I loathe people who find it harder to put up with a gown askew than with a soul askew and who judge a man by his bow, his bearing and his boots.

There is no one so bound to his own face that he does not cherish the hope of presenting another to the world.

He looked less handsome without the smile and glow in his eyes, but he also seemed more real. Being real will get me into trouble faster than any amount of charm.

I'm not saying she was lying to me, but she just acted so different before I got to know her, and if she really isn't like what she was at the beginning, I wish she could have just said so.

There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is a hundredth of a fraction of a false note to candor, it immediately produces dissonance, and as a result, exposure. But in flattery, even if everything is false down to the last note, it is still pleasant, and people will listen not without pleasure; with coarse pleasure, perhaps, but pleasure nevertheless.

The gentleman is solid mahogany; the fashionable man is only veneer.

Were I the Moor I would not be Iago. In following him I follow but myself; Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, But seeming so for my peculiar end. For when my outward action doth demonstrate The native act and figure of my heart In compliment extern, ’tis not long after But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve For daws to peck at. I am not what I am

We must put up with clothes as they are they have their reason for existing. They are on us to expose us to advertise what we wear them to conceal.

Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation.

Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.

Truth is such a precious article - let us all economize in its use.

Do not turn your back on anyone. You may be painted on one side only.

Men who have a lot of charm have it in place of something real that you are eventually going to want from them and find that they do not have.

Dreck is dreck and no amount of fancy polish is going to make it anything else.