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belated maternity has had its compensations small children have a habit of conferring persistent youth upon their parents, and by their eager vitality postpone the unenterprising cautions and timidities of middle age.

Vera Brittain

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Vera Brittain
Age: 76 †
Born: 1893
Born: December 29
Died: 1970
Died: March 29
Feminist
Journalist
Novelist
Nurse
Pacifist
Peace Activist
Poet
Suffragist
Writer
Vera Mary Brittain
Upon
Vitality
Belated
Children
Habit
Postpone
Youth
Maternity
Parents
Timidity
Parent
Compensation
Middle
Eager
Cautions
Small
Caution
Conferring
Age
Persistent
Compensations

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Definite gifts render their possessors capable of overcoming any obstacle this side of death they create an impetus of far more genuine value than external advantages in some other career where the impulse to make use of them remains weak or non-existent. The work that one enjoys is the greatest source of happiness and vitality in life.
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I thought that spring must last forevermore, For I was young and loved, and it was May.
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There is an abiding beauty which may be appreciated by those who will see things as they are and who will ask for no reward except to see.
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Meek wifehood is no part of my profession / I am your friend, but never your possession.
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I can think of few important movements for reform in which success was won by any method other than that of an energetic minority presenting the indifferent majority with a fait accompli, which was then accepted.
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I know of no place where the wind can be as icy and the damp so penetrating as in Oxford round about Easter time.
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So many people seem to imagine that because the actual tools of writing are easily accessible, it is less difficult than the other arts. This is entirely an illusion.
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few things are more rewarding than a child's open uncalculating devotion.
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I know one husband and wife who, whatever the official reasons given to the court for the break up of their marriage, were really divorced because the husband believed that nobody ought to read while he was talking and the wife that nobody ought to talk while she was reading.
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Few of humanity's characteristics are more disconcerting than its ability to reduce world-events to its own level, wherever this may happen to be.
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The idea that it is necessary to go to a university in order to become a successful writer . . . is one of those fantasies that surround authorship.
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Most men, whether men or women, wish above all else to be comfortable, and thought is a pre-eminently uncomfortable process it brings to the individual far more suffering than happiness in a semi-civilised world which still goes to war.
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The tragedy of journalism lies in its impermanence the very topicality which gives it brilliance condemns it to an early death. Too often it is a process of flinging bright balloons in the path of the hurricane, a casting of priceless petals upon the rushing surface of a stream.
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Why, I wonder, do people who at one time or another have all been young themselves, and who ought therefore to know better, generalize so suavely and so mendaciously about the golden hours of youth-that period of life when every sorrow seems permanent, and every setback insuperable?
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Modern war and modern civilisation are utterly incompatible...one or the other must go.
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The pacifist's task today is to find a method of helping and healing which provides a revolutionary constructive substitute for war.
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The best prose is written by authors who see their universe with a poet’s eyes.
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Babies are a nuisance, of course. But so does everything seem to be that is worth while – husbands and books and committees and being loved and everything. We have to choose between barren ease and rich unrest – or rather, one does not choose.
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College is a secluded life of scholastic vegetation
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We should never be at the mercy of Providence if only we understood that we ourselves are Providence.
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