Rebecca West Quotes - Page 8

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There are acacias, a graceful species amusingly devitalized by sentimentality, this kind drooping its leaves with the grace of a young widow bowed in controllable grief, this one obscuring them with a smooth silver as of placid tears. They please, like the minor French novelists of the eighteenth century, by suggesting a universe in which nothing cuts deep.

Rebecca West

Grief, Cutting, Grace

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

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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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... A La Recherche du Temps Perdu is like a beautiful hand with long fingers reaching out to pluck a perfect fruit, without error,for the accurate eye knows well it is growing just there on the branch, while Ulysses is the fumbling of a horned hand in darkness after a doubted jewel.

Rebecca West

Beautiful, Eye, Errors

Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.139, Open Road Media

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Babbitt as a book was planless; its end arrived apparently because its author had come to the end of the writing-pad, or rather, one might suspect from its length, to the end of all writing-pads then on the market.

Rebecca West

Book, Writing, Might

Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.169, Open Road Media

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No one can write a best-seller by taking thought. The slightest touch of insincerity blurs its appeal. The writer who keeps his tongue in his cheek, who knows that he is writing for fools and that, therefore, he had better write like a fool, makes a respectable living out of serials and novelettes; but he will never make the vast, the blaring, half a million success. That comes of blended sincerity and vitality.

Rebecca West

Writing, Vitality, Fiction

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... there has never been a period in history when there have been necessary killings which has not been instantly followed by a period when there have been unnecessary killings.

Rebecca West

History, Unnecessary, Killing

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

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whatever a work of art may be, the artist certainly cannot dare to be simple. He must have a nature as complicated and as violent, as totally unsuggestive of the word innocence, as a modern war.

Rebecca West

Art, War, Simple

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

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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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The childhood of the individual and the race is full of fears, and panic-stricken attempts to avert what is feared by placating the gods with painful sacrifices.

Rebecca West

Sacrifice, Race, Childhood

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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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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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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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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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The delight we find in art amounts to recognition of a saving grace, to an acknowledgment that the problem of life has a solution implicit in its own nature, though not yet formulated by the intellect.

Rebecca West

Art, Grace, Delight

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

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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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Art and propaganda have this much connection, that if a propaganda makes art impossible, it is clearly damned.

Rebecca West

Art, Connections, Impossible

Rebecca West (2011). “The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West 1911-17”, p.17, 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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Anthologies are mischievous things. Some years ago there was a rage for chemically predigested food, which was only suppressed when doctors pointed out that since human beings had been given teeth and digestive organs they had to be used or they degenerated very rapidly. Anthologies are predigested food for the brain.

Rebecca West

Book, Doctors, Years

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

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I've never gone anywhere where the men have come up to my infantile expectations. I always have gone through life constantly being surprised by the extreme, marvelous qualities of a small minority of men. But I can't see the rest of them. They seem awful rubbish.

Rebecca West

Men, Expectations, Quality

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... it matters not what natural endowment a race may have if it prostitutes itself to the service of death.

Rebecca West

Death, Race, May

Rebecca West (2010). “The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews”, p.194, Open Road Media

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When anything important has to be written ... I think your hand concentrates for you.

Rebecca West

Thinking, Hands, Important

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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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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.

Rebecca West

Race, Different Nationalities, Deeds

Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.616, Open Road Media

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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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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

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

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