Rebecca West Quotes - Page 7

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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.

Rebecca West

Mean, England And America, Europe

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Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.

Rebecca West

Funny, Military, Real

Quoted in Jonathon Green, Morrow's International Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations (1982)

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It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth.

Rebecca West

Writing, Race, History

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My memory is certainly in my hands. I can remember things only if I have a pencil and I can write with it and I can play with it. ... I think your hand concentrates for you. I don't know why it should be so.

Rebecca West

Memories, Writing, Thinking

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A great many quite good plays could be performed with rhythmic howls in the place of dialogue and lose almost nothing by the change.

Rebecca West

Change, Drama, Play

Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.16, Open Road Media

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There is nothing rarer than a man who can be trusted never to throw away happiness, however eagerly he sometimes grasps it. In history we are as frequently interested in our own doom.

Rebecca West

Men, Sometimes, Doom

Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.818, Open Road Media

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Were it possible for us to wait for ourselves to come into the room, not many of us would find our hearts breaking into flower as we heard the door handle turn.

Rebecca West

Flower, Heart, Doors

Rebecca West (2010). “A Train of Powder”, p.75, Open Road Media

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every human activity, whether it be love, philosophy, art, or revolution, is carried on with a special intensity in Paris.

Rebecca West

Art, Philosophy, Paris

Rebecca West (2010). “The Birds Fall Down”, p.81, Open Road Media

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If ever peace is to be imposed on the world it will only be because a large number of men who could have taken part in the drill display by the Guards or Marines or at the Royal Tournament turn that strength and precision to the service of life.

Rebecca West

Peace, Taken, Marine

Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.442, Open Road Media

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Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts.

Rebecca West

Music, Quiet, Certain

Rebecca West (2012). “The Saga of the Century: The Fountain Overflows, This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund”, p.554, Open Road Media

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Good God enlighten us! Which of these two belongs to the sterner sex - the man who sits in Whitehall all his life on a comfortable salary, or the woman who has to keep her teeth bared lest she has her meatless bone of 17s. 4d. a week snatched away from her and who has to produce the next generation on her off-days?

Rebecca West

Sex, Men, Two

Rebecca West (2011). “The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West 1911-17”, p.139, Open Road Media

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Mr. Arnold Bennett feels he has ranked himself for ever as a dry wine by what he mixed with himself of Maupassant; nevertheless he has put on the market some grocer's Sauterne in the form of several novels that are highly sentimental so far as their fundamental balance of values is concerned.

Rebecca West

Wine, Balance, Fundamentals

Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.6, Open Road Media

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For some reason a nation feels as shy about admitting that it ever went forth to war for the sake of more wealth as a man would about admitting that he had accepted an invitation just for the sake of the food. This is one of humanity's most profound imbecilities, as perhaps the only justification for asking one's fellowmen to endure the horrors of war would be the knowledge that if they did not fight they would starve.

Rebecca West

War, Fighting, Men

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

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I cannot see that art is anything less than a way of making joys perpetual.

Rebecca West

Art, Joy, Scrapbooking

Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.120, Open Road Media

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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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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

Men, Civilization, Reform

Rebecca West (2010). “The New Meaning of Treason”, p.182, Open Road Media

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The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians; and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne.

Rebecca West

Reading, Men, Independence

Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.140, Open Road Media

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To every man in the world there is one person of whom he knows little: whom he would never recognize if he met him walking down the street, whose motives are a mystery to him. That is himself.

Rebecca West

Men, World, Littles

Rebecca West (2011). “The Meaning of Treason”, p.260, Open Road Media

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Behind it was that vast suspension bridge which always troubles me because it reminds me that in this mechanized age I am as little able to understand my environment as any primitive woman who thinks that a waterfall is inhabited by a spirit, and indeed less so, for her opinion might from a poetical point of view be correct.

Rebecca West

Thinking, Bridges, Views

Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.14, Open Road Media

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The Portrait of a Lady is entirely successful in giving one the sense of having met somebody far too radiantly good for this world.

Rebecca West

Successful, Giving, Portraits

Rebecca West (2014). “Henry James: A Critical Biography”, p.42, Open Road Media

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

Rebecca West

Virginia, Survival, This Generation

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... in the happy laughter of a theatre audience one can get the most immediate and numerically impressive guarantee that there is nothing in one's mind which is not familiar to the mass of persons living at the time.

Rebecca West

Happy, Laughter, Guarantees That

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

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

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