Quote

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

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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
Necessity
Lips
Plaything
Essence
Decorative
Art
Poured
Form
Tasted
Life
Lifted
Adjustment
Cups

More quotes by Rebecca West

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The day was so delightful that I wished one could live slowly as one can play music slowly.
Rebecca West
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I take it as a prime cause of the present confusion of society that it is too sickly and too doubtful to use pleasure frankly as a test of value.
Rebecca West
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domestic work is the most elementary form of labor. It is suitable for those with the intelligence of rabbits. All it requires is cleanlines, tidiness and quickness - not moral or intellectual qualities at all, but merely the outward and visible signs of health.
Rebecca West
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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.
Rebecca West
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The memory, experiencing and re-experiencing, has such power over one's mere personal life, that one has merely lived.
Rebecca West
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There is one common condition for the lot of women in Western civilization and all other civilizations that we know about for certain, and that is, woman as a sex is disliked and persecuted, while as an individual she is liked, loved, and even, with reasonable luck, sometimes worshipped.
Rebecca West
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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.
Rebecca West
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All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.
Rebecca West
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Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization. ... The first thing a woman does when she gets a little money into her hands is to hire some other poor wretch to do her housework.
Rebecca West
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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.
Rebecca West
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Nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.
Rebecca West
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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.
Rebecca West
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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.
Rebecca West
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Where there is real love one wants to go to church first.
Rebecca West
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The adventure is over. Everything gets over, and nothing is ever enough. Except the part you carry with you.
Rebecca West
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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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... 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.
Rebecca West
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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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Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization.
Rebecca West
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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.
Rebecca West