Quote

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

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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
Rather
Owners
Means
Claim
Virility
Often
Considered
Virile
Makes
Claims
Venerable
America
England
Owner
Mean
Europe
Continent
Would
Usually
Beard
Special
Continents

More quotes by Rebecca West

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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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If the poor ever feel poor as the rich do, we will have a most bloody revolution.
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The delight we find in art amounts to recognition of a saving grace, to an acknowledgment that the problem of life has a solution implicit in its own nature, though not yet formulated by the intellect.
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There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.
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... it is nearly impossible to understand those who are beyond our sight, who are not explained to us by ties of birth or the contact of the flesh.
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But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example.
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Literature must be an analysis of experience and a synthesis of the findings into a unity.
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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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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.
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the law, like art, is always vainly racing to catch up with experience.
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Mr. Arnold Bennett feels he has ranked himself for ever as a dry wine by what he mixed with himself of Maupassant nevertheless he has put on the market some grocer's Sauterne in the form of several novels that are highly sentimental so far as their fundamental balance of values is concerned.
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A copy of the universe is not what is required of art one of the damned things is ample.
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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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It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.
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He is every other inch a gentleman.
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a good oyster cannot please the palate as acutely as a bad one can revolt it, and a good oyster cannot make him who eats it live for ever though a bad one can make him dead for ever.
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If it be ungentlemanly to kiss and tell, it is still further from gentlemanliness to pray and tell.
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There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.
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All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears.
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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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