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Nothing is so dear as what you're about to leave.

Jessamyn West

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Jessamyn West
Age: 81 †
Born: 1902
Born: July 18
Died: 1984
Died: February 22
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Indiana
United States
Mary Jessamyn West
Leave
Nothing
Dear

More quotes by Jessamyn West

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The conversation of two people remembering, if the memory is enjoyable to both, rocks on like music or lovemaking. There is a rhythm and a predictability to it that each anticipates and relishes.
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It is the loving, not the loved, woman who feels loveable.
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A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.
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A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.
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Being consistent meant not departing from convictions already formulated being a leader meant making other persons accept these convictions. It was a narrow track, and a one-way, but a person might travel a considerable distance on it. A number of dictators have.
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The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.
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In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults. They frolic with animals, caress them, share with them feelings neither has words for. Have they ever stroked any adult with the love they bestow on a cat? Hugged any grownup with the ecstasy they feel when clasping a puppy?
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If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one.
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Knowledge of what you love somehow comes to you you don’t have to read nor analyze nor study. If you love a thing enough, knowledge of it seeps into you, with particulars more real than any chart can furnish.
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Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract.
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People who keep journals have life twice
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Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.
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You make what seems a simple choice: choose a man or a job or a neighborhood- and what you have chosen is not a man or a job or a neighborhood, but a life.
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Justice is a terrible but necessary thing.
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If you train people properly, they won't be able to tell a drill from the real thing. If anything, the real thing will be easier.
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The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.
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It is not easy to be solitary unless you are also born ruthless. Every solitary repudiates someone.
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To meet at all, one must open ones eyes to another and there is no true conversation no matter how many words are spoken, unless the eye, unveiled and listening, opens itself to the other.
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There are two barriers that often prevent communication between the young and their elders. The first is middle-aged forgetfulness of the fact that they themselves are no longer young. The second is youthful ignorance of the fact that the middle aged are still alive.
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Only a fool would refuse to enter a fool's paradise when that's the only paradise he'll ever have a chance to enter.
Jessamyn West