Quote

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.

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
Find
Doors
Come
Room
Self
Rooms
Breaking
Many
Turn
Handle
Heart
Heard
Hearts
Would
Possible
Wait
Waiting
Door
Turns
Flower

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Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy but after a war it seems more like astrology.
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I have never been able to write with anything more than the left hand of my mind the right hand has always been engaged in something to do with personal relationships. I don't complain, because I think my left hand's power, as much as it has, is due to its knowledge of what my right hand is doing.
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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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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.
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Anthologies are mischievous things. Some years ago there was a rage for chemically predigested food, which was only suppressed when doctors pointed out that since human beings had been given teeth and digestive organs they had to be used or they degenerated very rapidly. Anthologies are predigested food for the brain.
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It is astonishing how the human animal survives its misfortunes.
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There are two kinds of imperialists - imperialists and bloody imperialists.
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The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.
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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.
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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 had a glorious father, I had no father at all.
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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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Like all bad drivers, he [Henry Andrews] thought he was the best driver in the world...
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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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A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere.
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Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization.
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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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I find to my astonishment that an unhappy marriage goes on being unhappy when it is over.
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