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most of us have to be self-righteous before we can be righteous.

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
Righteous
Righteousness
Self

More quotes by Vera Brittain

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It never seems to occur to anybody that some women may not want to find husbands.
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All that a pacifist can undertake -- but it is a very great deal -- is to refuse to kill, injure or otherwise cause suffering to another human creature, and untiringly to order his life by the rule of love though others may be captured by hate.
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The joys of motherhood are not excessively apparent during the first few weeks of a baby's 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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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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The best prose is written by authors who see their universe with a poet’s eyes.
Vera Brittain
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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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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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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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It is probably true to say that the largest scope for change still lies in men's attitude to women, and in women's attitude to themselves.
Vera Brittain
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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.
Vera Brittain
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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.
Vera Brittain
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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.
Vera Brittain
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Modern war and modern civilisation are utterly incompatible...one or the other must go.
Vera Brittain
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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.
Vera Brittain
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few things are more rewarding than a child's open uncalculating devotion.
Vera Brittain
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College is a secluded life of scholastic vegetation
Vera Brittain
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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.
Vera Brittain
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An author who waits for the right 'mood' will soon find that 'moods' get fewer and fewer until they cease altogether.
Vera Brittain
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However deep our devotion may be to parents or to children, it is our contemporaries alone with whom understanding is instinctive and entire.
Vera Brittain