Quote

The principle of avoiding the unnecessary expenditure of energy has enabled the species to survive in a world full of stimuli but it prevents the survival of the aristocracy.

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
Full
Stimulus
Energy
Avoiding
World
Unnecessary
Stimuli
Survive
Expenditure
Principle
Expenditures
Survival
Enabled
Species
Prevents
Principles
Aristocracy

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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.
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Nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.
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sentences were used by man before words and still come with the readiness of instinct to his lips. They, and not words, are the foundations of all language. ... Your cat has no words, but it has considerable feeling for the architecture of the sentence in relation to the problem of expressing climax.
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Reason's a thing we dimly see in sleep.
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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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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.
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Sex, which ought to be an incident of life, is the obsession of the well-fed world.
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He is every other inch a gentleman.
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It is astonishing how the human animal survives its misfortunes.
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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.
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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.
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Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.
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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.
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It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.
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I had a glorious father, I had no father at all.
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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.
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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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Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.
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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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If the poor ever feel poor as the rich do, we will have a most bloody revolution.
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