Rebecca West Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• the bad is more easily perceived than the good. A fresh lobster does not give such pleasure to the consumer as a stale one will give him pain.

  Rebecca West

  Pain, Evil, Giving

  Rebecca West (2010). “A Train of Powder”, p.62, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

• Reason's a thing we dimly see in sleep.

  Rebecca West

  Sleep, Reason

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Birds Fall Down”, p.4, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

• Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization.

  Rebecca West

  Home, Civilization, House

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

  5 Copy quote

• Economists are like Aeolian harps, and the sounds that issue from them are determined by the winds that blow.

  Rebecca West

  Blow, Wind, Issues

  Rebecca West (2011). “Survivors in Mexico”, p.20, Open Road Media

  6 Copy quote

• After any disturbance (such as two world wars coinciding with a period of growing economic and monetary incomprehensibility) we find our old concepts inadequate and look for new ones. But it unfortunately happens that the troubled times which produce an appetite for new ideas are the least propitious for clear thinking.

  Rebecca West

  War, Thinking, Ideas

  "The Annual Obituary 1983". Book edited by Elizabeth Devine and Marion Stoker Morgan, p. 143, 1984.

  4 Copy quote

• [Evelyn Waugh] made drunkenness cute and chic, and then took to religion, simply to have the most expensive carpet of all to be sick on.

  Rebecca West

  Cute, Sick, Made

  4 Copy quote

• ... it is nearly impossible to understand those who are beyond our sight, who are not explained to us by ties of birth or the contact of the flesh.

  Rebecca West

  Sight, Ties, Understanding

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.149, Open Road Media

  5 Copy quote

• I see the main problem of my life, and indeed anybody's life, as the balancing of competitive freedoms ... a sense of mutual obligations that have to be honored, and a legal system which can be trusted to step in when that sense fails.

  Rebecca West

  Justice, Legal System, Steps

  Rebecca West (2005). “Woman as Artist and Thinker”, p.40, iUniverse

  5 Copy quote

• There was too much hatred in the world; it was manifestly as dangerous as gunpowder, yet people let it lie about, in the way of ignition.

  Rebecca West

  Hate, Lying, People

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Thinking Reed”, p.180, Open Road Media

  5 Copy quote

• Humanity is never more sphinxlike than when it is expressing itself.

  Rebecca West

  Humanity

  Rebecca West (1957). “The Court and the Castle: Some Treatments of a Recurrent Theme /$Rebecca West”

  8 Copy quote

• Mr. James Joyce is a great man who is entirely without taste.

  Rebecca West

  Men, Taste, Great Men

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.4, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

• Like all bad drivers, he [Henry Andrews] thought he was the best driver in the world...

  Rebecca West

  Husband, World, Andrew

  "Rebecca West, The Art of Fiction No. 65". Interview with Marina Warner, www.theparisreview.org. 1981.

  4 Copy quote

• Neurotics, who cause less distress to themselves and their neighbours than those in the other category, are at war with their own natures. Their right hands are in conflict with their left. Psychotics, and it is those who commit purposeless crimes and prefer death to life, are at war with their environment. Right and left hands strike against the womb that carries them.

  Rebecca West

  War, Hands, Psychology

  Rebecca West (1952). “The meaning of treason”

  5 Copy quote

• If the poor ever feel poor as the rich do, we will have a most bloody revolution.

  Rebecca West

  Revolution, Wealth, Rich

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Thinking Reed”, p.263, Open Road Media

  5 Copy quote

• Domesticity is essentially drama, for drama is conflict, and the home compels conflict by its concentration of active personalities in a small area. The real objection to domesticity is that it is too exciting.

  Rebecca West

  Real, Drama, Home

  Rebecca West (1982). “The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17”

  9 Copy quote

• But just as it sometimes happens that the most temperate people, who have never acquired the habit of drinking alcohol, or even a taste for it, are tormented by the fear that somehow or other they will one day find themselves drunk, so Isabelle perpetually feared that she might be betrayed into an impulsive act that was destructive to such order as reason had imposed on life. Therefore she was forever running her faculty of analysis over in her mind with the preposterous zeal of an adolescent running a razor over his beardless chin.

  Rebecca West

  Running, Drinking, Order

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Thinking Reed”, p.8, Open Road Media

  7 Copy quote

• The unsuccessful bully can always become the father of a family.

  Rebecca West

  Bullying, Father, Bully

  Rebecca West (2011). “The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West 1911-17”, p.30, Open Road Media

  5 Copy quote

• Nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.

  Rebecca West

  Respect, Earth, Likes

  Rebecca West (1977). “Rebecca West, a celebration”, Viking Adult

  9 Copy quote

• Human beings are mercifully so constituted as to be able to conceal from themselves what they intend to do until they are well into the doing of it.

  Rebecca West

  Able, Wells, Humans

  Rebecca West (2011). “The Meaning of Treason”, p.148, Open Road Media

  5 Copy quote

• Journalism: an ability to meet the challenge of filling the space.

  Rebecca West

  Space, Challenges, Journalism

  New York Herald Tribune 22 Apr. 1956, sec. 6, p. 2

  9 Copy quote

• It appears that even the different parts of the same person do not converse among themselves, do not succeed in learning from each other what are their desires and their intentions.

  Rebecca West

  Desire, Different, Succeed

  5 Copy quote

• sentences were used by man before words and still come with the readiness of instinct to his lips. They, and not words, are the foundations of all language. ... Your cat has no words, but it has considerable feeling for the architecture of the sentence in relation to the problem of expressing climax.

  Rebecca West

  Cat, Men, Feelings

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.13, Open Road Media

  5 Copy quote

• History sometimes acts as madly as heredity, and her most unpredictable performances are often her most glorious.

  Rebecca West

  History, Sometimes, Heredity

  Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.97, Open Road Media

  5 Copy quote

• It's an absurd error to put modern English literature in the curriculum. You should read contemporary literature for pleasure or not at all. You shouldn't be taught to monkey with it.

  Rebecca West

  Errors, Literature, Monkeys

  "Rebecca West, The Art of Fiction No. 65". Interview with Marina Warner, The Paris Review, No. 79, www.theparisreview.org. Spring 1981.

  4 Copy quote

• It isn't only living people who die, it is great stretches of living, which can die even when the people who lived there still exist.

  Rebecca West

  People, Stills, Dies

  Rebecca West (2010). “The Birds Fall Down”, p.171, Open Road Media

  6 Copy quote

Page 5 of 9

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin