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Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is.

Rebecca West

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Rebecca West
Age: 90 †
Born: 1892
Born: December 21
Died: 1983
Died: March 15
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Suffragette
Writer
London
England
Cicely Isabel Fairfield
Dame Cicely Isabel Fairfield
Powerful
Stink
Hypocrite
Agent
Hypocrisy
Agents
Likely
Rate
Nostrils
Destruction
Stinks

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The day was so delightful that I wished one could live slowly as one can play music slowly.
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Any writer worth his salt knows that only a small proportion of literature does nore than partly compensate people for the damage they have suffered in learning to read.
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The redemptive power of divine grace no longer seemed credible, nor very respectable in the arbitrary performance that was claimed for it.
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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.
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All our Western thought is founded on this repulsive pretence that pain is the proper price of any good thing.
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No great thing happens suddenly.
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music is a missionary effort to colonize earth for imperialistic heaven.
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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.
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If the poor ever feel poor as the rich do, we will have a most bloody revolution.
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The unsuccessful bully can always become the father of a family.
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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.
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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.
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The memory, experiencing and re-experiencing, has such power over one's mere personal life, that one has merely lived.
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the law, like art, is always vainly racing to catch up with experience.
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It's an absurd error to put modern English literature in the curriculum. You should read contemporary literature for pleasure or not at all. You shouldn't be taught to monkey with it.
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Fiction and poetry are the only way one can stop time and give an account of an experience and nail it down so that it lasts for ever.
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I am not so repelled by Communism: an element of Communism in politics is necessary and inevitable. In any involved society there must be a feeling that something must be done about poverty - which is the basis of communism.
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The adventure is over. Everything gets over, and nothing is ever enough. Except the part you carry with you.
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There is nothing rarer than a man who can be trusted never to throw away happiness, however eagerly he sometimes grasps it. In history we are as frequently interested in our own doom.
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I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
Rebecca West