Quotes from Elizabeth Bibesco

What you possess is not what you jingle in the pockets of your memory, but the imaginings with which you fill the spaces of the future.

We often call a certainty a hope, to bring it luck.

The only thing that matters is to have charm and expression. Then comes that horrible gnawing doubt of our own magnetism. Is it possible that, though we are not lovely, we are not irresistible either? That we will have to go through life belonging neither to the triumphantly beautiful nor to the triumphantly ugly?

What an uncertain thing, marriage - what an elusive thing, happiness!

Our hearts crave a dependence our minds deny us.

Only the artists interest me whose hearts beat in unison with the poignant misery of the world. If you have not felt that, you have not lived. Pity is essential.

The half-hour of crowded anticipation, how fully it pays for the sterile hour that follows!

Can one end anything? A chapter, a paragraph, a sentence even? Doesn't everything one has ever done go on living in spite of subsequent events?

Passion is no respecter of persons. She hardly seems to select her victims.

My soul has gained the freedom of the night

To others we are not ourselves but a performer in their lives cast for a part we do not even know that we are playing.

Endurance is frequently a form of indecision.