Rebecca West Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• It is always one's virtues and not one's vices that precipitate one into disaster.

  Rebecca West

  Success, Vices, Virtue

  8 Copy quote

• Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization. ... The first thing a woman does when she gets a little money into her hands is to hire some other poor wretch to do her housework.

  Rebecca West

  Hands, Civilization, Hatred

  Rebecca West (1982). “The young Rebecca: writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17”, Not Avail

  4 Copy quote

• It would be no loss to the world if most of the writers now writing had been strangled at birth.

  Rebecca West

  Writing, Loss, Would Be

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• A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere.

  Rebecca West

  Strong, Hate, Cutting

  Rebecca West, Jane Marcus (1982). “The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17”, New York : Viking Press

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• There is in every one of us an unending see-saw between the will to live and the will to die.

  Rebecca West

  Suicidal, Saws, Unending

  Rebecca West (1928). “The strange necessity: essays by Rebecca West”

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• I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the people we meet?

  Rebecca West

  People, Wonder, Novel

  16 Copy quote

• Music is part of human life and partakes of the human tragedy. There is much more music in the world than is allowed to change into heard sounds and prove its point.

  Rebecca West

  Music, Tragedy, Sound

  Rebecca West (2010). “Family Memories: An Autobiographical Journey”, p.171, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

• Destiny is another name for humanity's half-hearted yet persistent search for death. Again and again peoples have had the chance to live and show what would happen if human life were irrigated by continual happiness; and they have preferred to blow up the canals and perish of drought.

  Rebecca West

  Blow, Destiny, Names

  Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.545, Open Road Media

  5 Copy quote

• Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves.

  Rebecca West

  Trust, Believe, People

  Statement in the Sunday Telegraph in 1975. "Rebecca West: A Life". Book by Victoria Glendinning, p. 11, 1987.

  9 Copy quote

• Any writer worth his salt knows that only a small proportion of literature does nore than partly compensate people for the damage they have suffered in learning to read.

  Rebecca West

  People, Doe, Literature

  4 Copy quote

• Birds sat on the telegraph wires that spanned the river as the black notes sit on a staff of music.

  Rebecca West

  Rivers, Bird, Black

  Rebecca West (2016). “The Return of the Soldier”, p.31, Xist Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• Yes,” said Mamma, “this is the worst of life, that love does not give us common sense but is a sure way of losing it. We love people, and we say that we are going to do more for them than friendship, but it makes such fools of us that we do far less, indeed sometimes what we do could be mistaken for the work of hatred.

  Rebecca West

  People, Common Sense, Giving

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Fountain Overflows”, p.275, Open Road Media

  8 Copy quote

• ... when the Spaniards persecuted heretics they may have been crude, but they were not being unreasonable or unpractical. They were at least wiser than the people of to-day who pretend that it does not matter what a man believes, as who should say that the flavour and digestibility of a pudding will have nothing to do with its ingredients.

  Rebecca West

  Believe, Men, Ideas

  Rebecca West (1928). “The strange necessity: essays by Rebecca West”

  7 Copy quote

• But once a culture develops sufficiently to become skeptical, the idea of censorship becomes less attractive. To suppress a book or a picture or a sculpture or a play or a film is a terrible act of aggression against the artist who created it. This is a miming of capital punishment; it destroys the life that has been emanated by a life.

  Rebecca West

  Book, Artist, Punishment

  5 Copy quote

• I always have beauty around me, for I have but to go to my piano, and trace one of the million designs that have been made by my masters.

  Rebecca West

  Piano, Design, Made

  Rebecca West (2010). “Harriet Hume: A London Fantasy”, p.87, Open Road Media

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• I do not think women understand how repelled a man feels when he sees a woman wholly absorbed in what she is thinking, unless it is about her child, or her husband, or her lover. It ... gives one gooseflesh.

  Rebecca West

  Children, Husband, Men

  4 Copy quote

• Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.

  Rebecca West

  Love, Real, Writing

  "The Art of Scepticism" (1952)

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• Margaret Thatcher has one great advantage - she is a daughter of the people and looks trim, as the daughter of the people desire to be. Shirley Williams has such an advantage over her because she's a member of the upper-middle class and can achieve the kitchen-sink revolutionary look that one cannot get unless one has been to a really good school.

  Rebecca West

  Daughter, School, Class

  5 Copy quote

• Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted.

  Rebecca West

  Art, Essence, Cups

  Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.36, Open Road Media

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• the reward for total abstinence from alcohol seems, illogically enough, to be the capacity for becoming intoxicated without it.

  Rebecca West

  Drinking, Addiction, Alcohol

  Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.373, Open Road Media

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• Bad art is maintained by the neurotic, who is deadly afraid of authentic art because it inspires him to go on living, and he is terrified of life.

  Rebecca West

  Art, Inspire, Goes On

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.113, Open Road Media

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• It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.

  Rebecca West

  Smell, Differences, History

  Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.77, Open Road Media

  7 Copy quote

• music is a missionary effort to colonize earth for imperialistic heaven.

  Rebecca West

  Music, Effort, Heaven

  5 Copy quote

• I've never been able to do just one draft. That seems a wonderful thing. Do you know anyone who can?

  Rebecca West

  Able, Wonderful, Knows

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• When those of our army whose voices are likely to coo tell us that the day of sex antagonism is over and that henceforth we only have to advance hand in hand with the male, I do not believe it.

  Rebecca West

  Sex, Believe, Army

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