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God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.
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
Book
Forbid
Banned
Corny
Censorship
Sarcastic
Practice
Funny
Indefensible
Women
Infanticide
More quotes by Rebecca West
[On Jane Austen:] To believe her limited in range because she was harmonious in method is as sensible as to imagine that when the Atlantic Ocean is as smooth as a mill-pond it shrinks to the size of a mill-pond.
Rebecca West
If there is to be any romance in marriage woman must be given every chance to earn a decent living at other occupations. Otherwise no man can be sure that he is loved for himself alone, and that his wife did not come to the Registry Office because she had no luck at the Labour Exchange.
Rebecca West
The unsuccessful bully can always become the father of a family.
Rebecca West
Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted.
Rebecca West
There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.
Rebecca West
All gambling is the telling of a fortune, but of a monstrously depleted fortune, empty of everything save one numerical circumstance, shorn of all such richness as a voyage across the water, a fair man that loves you, a dark woman that means you harm.
Rebecca West
I've never gone anywhere where the men have come up to my infantile expectations. I always have gone through life constantly being surprised by the extreme, marvelous qualities of a small minority of men. But I can't see the rest of them. They seem awful rubbish.
Rebecca West
Sex, which ought to be an incident of life, is the obsession of the well-fed world.
Rebecca West
it is necessary that we should all have a little of the will to die, because otherwise we would find the performance of our biological duty of death too difficult.
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 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
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.
Rebecca West
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 means that its owner makes a special claim to virility.
Rebecca West
Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is.
Rebecca West
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 time.'
Rebecca West
The case against religion is the responsibility of God for the sufferings of mankind, which makes it impossible to believe the good things said about Him in the Bible, and consequently to believe anything it says about Him.
Rebecca West
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 which make it certain that what they dread will happen.
Rebecca West
The principle of avoiding the unnecessary expenditure of energy has enabled the species to survive in a world full of stimuli but it prevents the survival of the aristocracy.
Rebecca West
It is the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
Rebecca West
International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge.
Rebecca West
