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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.

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
Feelings
Bases
Done
Elements
Must
Necessary
Something
Poverty
Repelled
Involved
Communism
Feeling
Element
Politics
Inevitable
Society
Basis

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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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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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But once a culture develops sufficiently to become skeptical, the idea of censorship becomes less attractive. To suppress a book or a picture or a sculpture or a play or a film is a terrible act of aggression against the artist who created it. This is a miming of capital punishment it destroys the life that has been emanated by a life.
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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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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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The Portrait of a Lady is entirely successful in giving one the sense of having met somebody far too radiantly good for this world.
Rebecca West
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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.
Rebecca West
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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.'
Rebecca West
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I do not think women understand how repelled a man feels when he sees a woman wholly absorbed in what she is thinking, unless it is about her child, or her husband, or her lover. It ... gives one gooseflesh.
Rebecca West
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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.
Rebecca West
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If there is to be any romance in marriage woman must be given every chance to earn a decent living at other occupations. Otherwise no man can be sure that he is loved for himself alone, and that his wife did not come to the Registry Office because she had no luck at the Labour Exchange.
Rebecca West
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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.
Rebecca West
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music is a missionary effort to colonize earth for imperialistic heaven.
Rebecca West
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Where there is real love one wants to go to church first.
Rebecca West
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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.
Rebecca West
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Time spent in a casino is time given to death, a foretaste of the hour when one's flesh will be diverted to the purposes of the worm and not of the will.
Rebecca West
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If the poor ever feel poor as the rich do, we will have a most bloody revolution.
Rebecca West
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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.
Rebecca West
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When anything important has to be written ... I think your hand concentrates for you.
Rebecca West
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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.
Rebecca West