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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.
Vera Brittain
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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.
Vera Brittain
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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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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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The joys of motherhood are not excessively apparent during the first few weeks of a baby's life.
Vera Brittain
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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.
Vera Brittain
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Venice is all sea and sculpture.
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.
Vera Brittain
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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.
Vera Brittain
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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.
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
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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.
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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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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Modern war and modern civilisation are utterly incompatible...one or the other must go.
Vera Brittain
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We should never be at the mercy of Providence if only we understood that we ourselves are Providence.
Vera Brittain
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Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.
Vera Brittain
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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?
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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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