Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

As if a woman of education bought things because she wanted 'em.

Marriage is for noblewomen with nothing else to do.

People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.

Lives in previous centuries for women are largely a matter of class. It would have been fun to have been a rich, privileged woman in the 18th century, but no fun at all to be her maid.

A single woman with a very narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid - the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman of good fortune is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.

Class isn't something you buy. Look at you. You have a $500 suit on and you're still a lowlife.

Money doesn't buy class.

I married beneath me—all women do.

What is crime among the multitude is only vice among the few.

Chivalry only worked with men of the same class.

Nice girls at school whose fathers owned a Volvo were unapproachable and probably condemned to spinsterhood for all time, simply because no one had the courage to advance up the drive.

I remember watching a 'Big Brother' contestant saying that she wanted to be a footballer's wife. I thought, 'What is the world coming to?'

He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter; so far we are equal.

Sins cut boldly up through every class in society, but mere misdemeanours show a certain level in life.

What is any respectable girl brought up to do but to catch some rich man's fancy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him?--as if a marriage ceremony could make any difference in the right or wrong of the thing!

For any man to match above his rank is but to sell his liberty.

The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.

She only maintains that it is possible, under some circumstances, for a lady to murder her husband; but that a woman who wears ankle-strap shoes and smokes on the street corner, though she may be a joy to all who know her and have devoted her life to charity, could never qualify as a lady.

When I was young, if a girl married poverty, she bcame a drudge; if she married wealth, she became a doll.

In civilized society external advantages make us more respected. A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one. You may analyze this and say, What is there in it? But that will avail you nothing, for it is a part of a general system.

In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.

Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest swell, but he simply cannot buy the right things.

it was always insolent for a common man to take a chair in the presence of a lady - the word LADY, we may be sure, capitalized in her mind, and denoting not sex but rank.

You can raise her up a lady but there's one thing you just can't avoid.

If you had pockets, you were associated with a labor force. It meant you had things to carry yourself. Otherwise, your lady's maid or your manservant would have done it for you.