Rebecca West Quotes

86 quotes in 1234 categories

• Motherhood is neither a duty nor a privilege, but simply the way that humanity can satisfy the desire for physical immortality and triumph over the…
• The adventure is over. Everything gets over, and nothing is ever enough. Except the part you carry with you.
• 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…
• 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.
• Charity is an ugly trick. It is a virtue grown by the rich on the graves of the poor. Unless it is accompanied by sincere…
• There is in every one of us an unending see-saw between the will to live and the will to die.
• Getting a divorce is nearly always as cheerful and useful an occupation as breaking valuable china.
• Those who foresee the future and recognize it as tragic are often seized upon by a madness which forced them to commit the very acts…
• There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.
• 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…
• Of Virginia Woolf: The talent of this generation which is most certain of survival.
• 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…
• It seemed a good idea at the time.
• 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…
• Birds sat on the telegraph wires that spanned the river as the black notes sit on a staff of music.
• There is a point, and it is reached more easily than is supposed, where interference with freedom of the arts and literature becomes an attack…
• I find to my astonishment that an unhappy marriage goes on being unhappy when it is over.
• 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…
• If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on its headstone might well be: 'It seemed like a good idea at the…
• The American struggle for the vote was much more difficult than the English for the simple reason that it was much more easy.

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