Quote

There is nothing rarer than a man who can be trusted never to throw away happiness, however eagerly he sometimes grasps it. In history we are as frequently interested in our own doom.

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
Men
However
Interested
Grasps
Happiness
Rarer
History
Eagerly
Away
Doom
Nothing
Frequently
Sometimes
Trusted
Never
Throw

More quotes by 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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After any disturbance (such as two world wars coinciding with a period of growing economic and monetary incomprehensibility) we find our old concepts inadequate and look for new ones. But it unfortunately happens that the troubled times which produce an appetite for new ideas are the least propitious for clear thinking.
Rebecca West
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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.
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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... in the happy laughter of a theatre audience one can get the most immediate and numerically impressive guarantee that there is nothing in one's mind which is not familiar to the mass of persons living at the time.
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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It is the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
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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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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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.
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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I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
Rebecca West
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... A La Recherche du Temps Perdu is like a beautiful hand with long fingers reaching out to pluck a perfect fruit, without error,for the accurate eye knows well it is growing just there on the branch, while Ulysses is the fumbling of a horned hand in darkness after a doubted jewel.
Rebecca West
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The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated he forgets truths which are too simple.
Rebecca West
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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.
Rebecca West
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There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.
Rebecca West
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The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.
Rebecca West
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Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.
Rebecca West
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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.
Rebecca West
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He is every other inch a gentleman.
Rebecca West