Rebecca West Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Rebecca West

Rebecca West Quotes & Sayings

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The memory, experiencing and re-experiencing, has such power over one's mere personal life, that one has merely lived. — Rebecca West

Art is at least in part a way of collecting information about the universe. — Rebecca West

Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one's own Trojan horse. — Rebecca West

His smile bore the same relation to a real smile as false teeth do to real teeth ... — Rebecca West

There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence. — Rebecca West

Once a secret society establishes itself within an open society, there is no end to the hideous mistrust it must cause. — Rebecca West

To make laws is a human instinct that arises as soon as food and shelter have been ensured, among all peoples, everywhere. — Rebecca West

It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk. — Rebecca West

The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple. — Rebecca West

There was a golden heaviness about her face, to look on it was like watching honey drop slowly from a spoon. — Rebecca West

Submission to poverty is the unpardonable sin against the body. Submission to unhappiness is the unpardonable sin against the spirit. — Rebecca West

For the sake of my country, and perhaps a little for the sake of my soul, I have given up the deep peace of being in opposition. — Rebecca West

You must always believe that life is as extraordinary as music says it is. — Rebecca West

Unhappy people are dangerous. — Rebecca West

Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind. — Rebecca West

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

All disgrace smells alike. Differences in ruin are only matters of degree. — Rebecca West

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

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

There are two kinds of imperialists - imperialists and bloody imperialists. — Rebecca West

...[A] rebel who is inaccurate and mad is a traitor. — Rebecca West

It would be no loss to the world if most of the writers now writing had been strangled at birth. — Rebecca West

The redemptive power of divine grace no longer seemed credible, nor very respectable in the arbitrary performance that was claimed for it. — Rebecca West

I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute. — Rebecca West

[The satirist] must fully possess, at least in the world of the imagination, the quality the lack of which he is deriding in others. — 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. — Rebecca West

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

The day was so delightful that I wished one could live slowly as one can play music slowly. — Rebecca West

Christianity must be regarded not as a final revelation but as a phase of revelation. — Rebecca West

When we choose a god we choose one as much like ourselves as possible, or even more so! — Rebecca West

There is no escape from mystery. It is the character of our being. — Rebecca West

All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears. — Rebecca West

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

Unfortunately, all gatherings convened for the betterment of the human lot show a tendency to gas themselves, and not with laughing-gas either. — Rebecca West

It is always one's virtues and not one's vices that precipitate one into disaster. — Rebecca West

Birds sat on the telegraph wires that spanned the river as the black notes sit on a staff of music. — Rebecca West

Getting a divorce is nearly always as cheerful and useful an occupation as breaking valuable china. — Rebecca West

The world had gone too far in its enthusiasm for moderation and the thing had to be stopped — Rebecca West

The mind is its own enemy, that fights itself with the innumerable pliant and ineluctable arms of the octopus. — Rebecca West

Mr. James Joyce is a great man who is entirely without taste. — Rebecca West

It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion. — Rebecca West

I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the people we meet? — Rebecca West

I have no faith in the sense of comforting beliefs which persuade me that all my troubles are blessings in disguise. — Rebecca West

If it be ungentlemanly to kiss and tell, it is still further from gentlemanliness to pray and tell. — Rebecca West

The American struggle for the vote was much more difficult than the English for the simple reason that it was much more easy. — Rebecca West

[N]obody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth. — Rebecca West

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

Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul. — Rebecca West

I've never been able to do just one draft. That seems a wonderful thing. Do you know anyone who can? — Rebecca West

I always have beauty around me, for I have but to go to my piano, and trace one of the million designs that have been made by my masters. — Rebecca West

I cannot think that espionage can be recommended as a technique for building an impressive civilization. It's a lout's game. — Rebecca West

The reward for total abstinence from alcohol seems, illogically enough, to be the capacity for becoming intoxicated without it. — Rebecca West

Idiocy is the female defect ... It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy ... — Rebecca West

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

Music is a missionary effort to colonize earth for imperialistic heaven. — Rebecca West

There is nothing more frightening than the faces of people whom one does not know but who seem to know one, and be amused by one. — Rebecca West

Where there is real love one wants to go to church first. — Rebecca West

There's a real contradiction that's difficult to explain to the West and the outside world about China and about the Internet. — Rebecca MacKinnon

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience. — Rebecca West

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

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

The general tendency [is] to be censorious of the vices to which one has not been tempted. — Rebecca West

He is every other inch a gentleman. — Rebecca West

The stumbling weighty hostility of bears, the incorporated rapacity of wolves.. — Rebecca West

There is, of course, no reason for the existence of the male sex except that sometimes one needs help with moving the piano. — Rebecca West

There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time. — Rebecca West

People call me a feminist whenever I express statements that distinguish me from a doormat. — Rebecca West

Why must you always try to be omnipotent, and shove things about? Tragic things happen sometimes that we just have to submit to. — Rebecca West

A lot of Chinese don't understand why people in the West are critical of China. — Rebecca MacKinnon

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. — Rebecca West

To lovers innumerable things do not matter. — Rebecca West

Sex, which ought to be an incident of life, is the obsession of the well-fed world. — Rebecca West

There is no wider gulf in the universe than yawns between those on the hither and thither side of vital experience. — Rebecca West

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

I hate the corpses of empires, they stink as nothing else. They stink so badly that I cannot believe that even in life they were healthy. — Rebecca West

Their faces were clay-coloured and featureless, yet not stupid; they might have been shrewd turnips. — Rebecca West

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

The earth itself is slightly resistant to routine. — Rebecca West

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

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

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. — Rebecca West

Reason's a thing we dimly see in sleep. — Rebecca West

The choice between law and justice is an easy one for courageous minds. — Rebecca West

[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

Literature must be an analysis of experience and a synthesis of the findings into a unity. — Rebecca West

A good cause has to be careful of the company it keeps. — Rebecca West

But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example. — Rebecca West

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

Here lies the real terror in the international war of ideologies; that a city knows not whom it entertains. — Rebecca West

Existence in itself, taken at its least miraculous, is a miracle. — Rebecca West

If I do not do sensible things about investments I shall spend my old age in a workhouse, where nobody will understand my jokes. — Rebecca West

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

She repaid us by giving life the quality that but for her was only to be found in music — 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. — Rebecca West

The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots. — Rebecca West

What is art? It is not decoration. It is the re-living of experience. — Rebecca West

There is in every one of us an unending see-saw between the will to live and the will to die. — Rebecca West

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

Each of us has always hoped that a stranger would come who would scatter holy water on the image of the other and lay it for ever — Rebecca West

Like all bad drivers, he thought he was the best driver in the world. [husband Henry Andrews] — Rebecca West