Rebecca West quotes - page 3

There is no wider gulf in the universe than yawns between those on the hither and thither side of vital experience. (Rebecca West)
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. View quote
Rebecca West
A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample. View quote
Rebecca West
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. View quote
Rebecca West
I write books to find out about things. View quote
Rebecca West
Humanity is never more sphinxlike than when it is expressing itself. View quote
Rebecca West
But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example. View quote
Rebecca West
I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the people we meet? View quote
Rebecca West
There have been many legends invented about Charlemagne, but he was no legend. Out of the shattered ruins of the ancient world he built the modern world, and even now reflection on his feat quickens the pulse. It was an achievement as daring as any long transoceanic flight of our day, but it called also for endurance lasting not hours but decades, and for adventure of the mind as well as of the body; a vast new political trajectory was described as well as a military one. View quote
Rebecca West
There is, of course, no reason for the existence of the male sex except that one sometimes needs help with moving the piano. View quote
Rebecca West
The memory, experiencing and re-experiencing, has such power over one's mere personal life, that one has merely lived. (Rebecca West)
Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization. View quote
Rebecca West
Like all bad drivers, he thought he was the best driver in the world. View quote
Rebecca West
Women know the damnation of charity because the habit of civilization has always been to throw them cheap alms rather than give them good wages. View quote
Rebecca West
The word "idiot” comes from a Greek root meaning private person. View quote
Rebecca West
It would seem ... that man has been shocked by the war into forgetting how to be a political animal. This suspicion is confirmed by the spread of Fascism, which is a headlong flight into fantasy from the necessity for political thought. View quote
Rebecca West
There came to these selected stocks a deadly, ungrateful complacence, which made them count these opportunities as their achievements, and belittle everybody else's achievements unless they were similarly confused with opportunities; and which did worse than this, by abolishing all standards from their minds except what they themselves were and did. View quote
Rebecca West
There is in every one of us an unending see-saw between the will to live and the will to die. View quote
Rebecca West
She saw she had fallen into the hands of one of those doctors who have strayed too far from apparent in the direction of the soul. View quote
Rebecca West
In England and America a beard usually means that its owner would rather be considered venerable than virile on the continent of Europe it often means that its owner makes a special claim to virility. View quote
Rebecca West
Men must be capable of imagining and executing and insisting on social change if they are to reform or even maintain civilization, and capable too of furnishing the rebellion which is sometimes necessary if society is not to perish of immobility. (Rebecca West)
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. View quote
Rebecca West
Now different races and nationalities cherish different ideals of society that stink in each other's nostrils with an offensiveness beyond the power of any but the most monstrous private deed. View quote
Rebecca West
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. View quote
Rebecca West
A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life... View quote
Rebecca West