Rebecca West Quotes - Page 8

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If there is a God, I don't think He would demand that anyone bow down or stand up to Him. I often have a suspicion that God is still trying to work things out and hasn't finished.

Rebecca West

Thinking, If There Is A God, Trying

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

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The happy marriage, which is the only proper nursery, is indissoluble. The unhappy marriage, which perpetually tells the child a bogey-man story about life, ought to be dissolved.

Rebecca West

Children, Divorce, Men

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

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Of Virginia Woolf: The talent of this generation which is most certain of survival.

Rebecca West

Virginia, Survival, This Generation

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A child is an adult temporarily enduring conditions which exclude the possibility of happiness.

Rebecca West

Children, Adults, Possibility

Rebecca West (2010). “The Fountain Overflows”, p.288, Open Road Media

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All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.

Rebecca West

Good Life, Fiction, Biographies

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a good oyster cannot please the palate as acutely as a bad one can revolt it, and a good oyster cannot make him who eats it live for ever though a bad one can make him dead for ever.

Rebecca West

Oysters, Palate, Please

Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.484, Open Road Media

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Were I to go down into the market-place, armed with the powers of witchcraft, and take a peasant by the shoulders and whisper to him, 'In your lifetime, have you known peace?' wait for his answer, shake his shoulders and transform him into his father, and ask him the same question, and transform him in his turn to his father, I would never hear the word 'Yes,' if I carried my questioning of the dead back for a thousand years. I would always hear, 'No, there was fear, there were our enemies without, our rulers within, there was prison, there was torture, there was violent death.

Rebecca West

Father, Years, Waiting

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

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International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge.

Rebecca West

Gestures, Imperfect, International

"The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews".

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Without doubt cats are intellectuals who have been, by some mysterious decree of Providence, deprived of the comfort of the word.

Rebecca West

Cat, Doubt, Comfort

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It's my profession to bring people from various outlying districts of the mind to the normal. There seems to be a general feeling it's the place where they ought to be. Sometimes I don't see the urgency myself.

Rebecca West

People, Feelings, Mind

Rebecca West (2010). “The Return of the Soldier”, p.110, Broadview Press

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I believe if people are looking for the truth, the truth of the Christian religion will come out and meet them.

Rebecca West

Christian, Believe, People

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I had come to Yugoslavia to see what history meant in flesh and blood.

Rebecca West

Blood, Yugoslavia, Flesh

Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.62, Open Road Media

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In these pages your imaginations, your desires, your passions are given life; Thoughts take shape that turn into dreams and our aspirations all start with a dream. Reading is where those dreams really can come true over and over again.

Rebecca West

Dream, Reading, Passion

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The word 'idiot' comes from a Greek root meaning private person. Idiocy is the female defect: intent on their private lives, women follow their fate through a darkness deep as that cast by malformed cells in the brain. It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy: men are so obsessed by public affairs that they see the world as by moonlight, which shows the outlines of every object but not the details indicative of their nature.

Rebecca West

Fate, Men, Cells

Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.7, Open Road Media

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To those who fall and hurt themselves one runs with comfort; by those who lie dangerously stricken by a disease one sits and waits.

Rebecca West

Sympathy, Running, Hurt

Rebecca West (2010). “The Judge”, p.245, Open Road Media

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it is necessary that we should all have a little of the will to die, because otherwise we would find the performance of our biological duty of death too difficult.

Rebecca West

Littles, Should, Duty

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A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample.

Rebecca West

Funny, Art, Humor

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The case against religion is the responsibility of God for the sufferings of mankind, which makes it impossible to believe the good things said about Him in the Bible, and consequently to believe anything it says about Him.

Rebecca West

Believe, Responsibility, Suffering

Rebecca West (2011). “Survivors in Mexico”, p.60, Open Road Media

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one of Mr. [Thomas] Hardy's ancestors must have married a weeping willow. There are pages and pages in his collected poems which are simply plain narratives in ballad form of how an unenjoyable time was had by all.

Rebecca West

Weeping Willows, Narrative, Pages

Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.118, Open Road Media

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[On Jane Austen:] To believe her limited in range because she was harmonious in method is as sensible as to imagine that when the Atlantic Ocean is as smooth as a mill-pond it shrinks to the size of a mill-pond.

Rebecca West

Believe, Ocean, Ponds

Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.165, Open Road Media

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We all drew on the comfort which is given out by the major works of Mozart, which is as real and material as the warmth given up by a glass of brandy.

Rebecca West

Real, War, Glasses

Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.292, Open Road Media

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Most magazines have that look of being predestined to be left which one sees on the faces of the women whose troubles bring them to the Law Courts.

Rebecca West

Law, Looks, Magazines

Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.143, Open Road Media

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Embraces do not matter; they merely indicate the will to love and may as well be followed by defeat as victory. But disregard means that now there needs to be no straining of the eyes, no stretching forth of the hands, no pressing of the lips, because theirs is such a union that they are no longer aware of the division of their flesh.

Rebecca West

Mean, Eye, Hands

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

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The aged are terrible - mere heaps of cinders on the grass from which none can tell how tall the flames once were or what company gathered round them.

Rebecca West

Flames, Age, Grass

Rebecca West (2010). “The Judge”, p.45, Open Road Media

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One was kind, out of a bounty that could hardly be exhausted, to old governesses and gardeners, who could be relied upon to give thanks with proper abjection; one performed public duties, for which one was paid in full by deference; one was chaste, refusing to run away from one's husband with other men who for the most part did not ask one to do so, and who in any case had nothing better to offer than one's own home. Knowing no difficulties one was without fortitude; knowing no criteria but one's own achievements one was without taste.

Rebecca West

Running, Husband, Home

Rebecca West (2010). “The Thinking Reed”, p.149, Open Road Media

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Born: December 21, 1892
Died: March 15, 1983
Occupation: Author
Cite this Page: Citation

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