Quote

[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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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
Size
Mills
Method
Shrinks
Ocean
Harmonious
Imagine
Jane
Mill
Believe
Smooth
Austen
Sensible
Pond
Limited
Atlantic
Range
Ponds

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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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... there has never been a period in history when there have been necessary killings which has not been instantly followed by a period when there have been unnecessary killings.
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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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It is astonishing how the human animal survives its misfortunes.
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The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.
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I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the people we meet?
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Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.
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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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The day was so delightful that I wished one could live slowly as one can play music slowly.
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It is always one's virtues and not one's vices that precipitate one into disaster.
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I had a glorious father, I had no father at all.
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All our Western thought is founded on this repulsive pretence that pain is the proper price of any good thing.
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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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It is the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
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it is necessary that we should all have a little of the will to die, because otherwise we would find the performance of our biological duty of death too difficult.
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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.
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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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The adventure is over. Everything gets over, and nothing is ever enough. Except the part you carry with you.
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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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