Vera Brittain Quotes

Few things are more rewarding than a child's open uncalculating devotion.

The best prose is written by authors who see their universe with a poet's eyes.

You know you wouldn't be happy unless you married an odd sort of person

At college, more than anywhere else, one was likely to make the friendships that supported one through life.

It is probably true to say that the largest scope for change still lies in men's attitude to women, and in women's attitude to themselves.

There is a strange lack of dignity in conquest; the dull, uncomplaining endurance of defeat appears more worthy of congratulation.

Venice is all sea and sculpture ...

Her mind was like a spring-tide in full flood; rich, shining, vigorous, and capable of infinite variety.

I thought that spring must last forevermore, For I was young and loved, and it was May.

The pacifist's task today is to find a method of helping and healing which provides a revolutionary constructive
substitute for war.

There is an abiding beauty which may be appreciated by those who will see things as they are and who will ask for no reward except to see.

College is a secluded life of scholastic vegetation

The idea that it is necessary to go to a university in order to become a successful writer ... is one of those fantasies that surround authorship.

Politics is the executive expression of human immaturity.

An author who waits for the right 'mood' will soon find that 'moods' get fewer and fewer until they cease altogether.

When the Great War broke out, it came to me not as a superlative tragedy, but as an interruption of the most exasperating kind to my personal plans.

However deep our devotion may be to parents or to children, it is our contemporaries alone with whom understanding is instinctive and entire.

We should never be at the mercy of Providence if only we understood that we ourselves are Providence.

Modern war and modern civilisation are utterly incompatible ... one or the other must go.

[I] wondered if he was looking up at that same moon, far away, and thinking of me as I was thinking of him.

Meek wifehood is no part of my profession; I am your friend, but never your possession.

The joys of motherhood are not excessively apparent during the first few weeks of a baby's life.

There seemed to be nothing left in the world, for I felt that Roland had taken with him all my future and Edward all my past.

I know of no place where the wind can be as icy and the damp so penetrating as in Oxford round about Easter time.

It never seems to occur to anybody that some women may not want to find husbands.