Quote

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

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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
Recognize
Foresee
Happen
Seized
Upon
Dread
Future
Tragic
Often
Forced
Happens
Acts
Certain
Madness
Make
Commit

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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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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.
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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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[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.
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To make laws is a human instinct that arises as soon as food and shelter have been ensured, among all peoples, everywhere.
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When those of our army whose voices are likely to coo tell us that the day of sex antagonism is over and that henceforth we only have to advance hand in hand with the male, I do not believe it.
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I find to my astonishment that an unhappy marriage goes on being unhappy when it is over.
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Literature must be an analysis of experience and a synthesis of the findings into a unity.
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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.
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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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Behind it was that vast suspension bridge which always troubles me because it reminds me that in this mechanized age I am as little able to understand my environment as any primitive woman who thinks that a waterfall is inhabited by a spirit, and indeed less so, for her opinion might from a poetical point of view be correct.
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There is no wider gulf in the universe than yawns between those on the hither and thither side of vital experience.
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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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Were it possible for us to wait for ourselves to come into the room, not many of us would find our hearts breaking into flower as we heard the door handle turn.
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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.'
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Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.
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No great thing happens suddenly.
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Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.
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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 in opposition.
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Margaret Thatcher has one great advantage - she is a daughter of the people and looks trim, as the daughter of the people desire to be. Shirley Williams has such an advantage over her because she's a member of the upper-middle class and can achieve the kitchen-sink revolutionary look that one cannot get unless one has been to a really good school.
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