Quote

To make laws is a human instinct that arises as soon as food and shelter have been ensured, among all peoples, everywhere.

Rebecca West

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Laws
Soon
Ensured
Among
Arises
Food
Peoples
Law
Shelter
Human
Arise
Humans
Instinct
Make
Everywhere

More quotes by Rebecca West

Image
A good cause has to be careful of the company it keeps.
Rebecca West
Image
The memory, experiencing and re-experiencing, has such power over one's mere personal life, that one has merely lived.
Rebecca West
Image
music is a missionary effort to colonize earth for imperialistic heaven.
Rebecca West
Image
The unsuccessful bully can always become the father of a family.
Rebecca West
Image
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.
Rebecca West
Image
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
Image
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.
Rebecca West
Image
Yes,” said Mamma, “this is the worst of life, that love does not give us common sense but is a sure way of losing it. We love people, and we say that we are going to do more for them than friendship, but it makes such fools of us that we do far less, indeed sometimes what we do could be mistaken for the work of hatred.
Rebecca West
Image
It isn't only living people who die, it is great stretches of living, which can die even when the people who lived there still exist.
Rebecca West
Image
Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.
Rebecca West
Image
Sex, which ought to be an incident of life, is the obsession of the well-fed world.
Rebecca West
Image
Art is not a luxury, but a necessity.
Rebecca West
Image
... 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.
Rebecca West
Image
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
Image
When anything important has to be written ... I think your hand concentrates for you.
Rebecca West
Image
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.
Rebecca West
Image
The adventure is over. Everything gets over, and nothing is ever enough. Except the part you carry with you.
Rebecca West
Image
If the poor ever feel poor as the rich do, we will have a most bloody revolution.
Rebecca West
Image
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.
Rebecca West
Image
Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy but after a war it seems more like astrology.
Rebecca West