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The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated he forgets truths which are too simple.

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
Truth
Forgets
Men
Truths
Complicated
Trouble
Forget
Simple
Learn
Cannot
Twofold

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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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Where there is real love one wants to go to church first.
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Here lies the real terror in the international war of ideologies that a city knows not whom it entertains.
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Unfortunately, all gatherings convened for the betterment of the human lot show a tendency to gas themselves, and not with laughing-gas either.
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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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But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example.
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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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If the poor ever feel poor as the rich do, we will have a most bloody revolution.
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I see the main problem of my life, and indeed anybody's life, as the balancing of competitive freedoms ... a sense of mutual obligations that have to be honored, and a legal system which can be trusted to step in when that sense fails.
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Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization.
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Music is part of human life and partakes of the human tragedy. There is much more music in the world than is allowed to change into heard sounds and prove its point.
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Art is not a luxury, but a necessity.
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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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Man is a hating rather than a loving animal.
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It is not possible that a just God should forgive people who are wicked because another person who was good endured agony by being nailed to a cross.
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I don't believe that to understand is necessarily to pardon, but I feel that to understand makes one forget that one cannot pardon.
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the law, like art, is always vainly racing to catch up with experience.
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It is the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
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It is astonishing how the human animal survives its misfortunes.
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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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