"The American struggle for the vote was much more difficult than the English for the simple reason that it was much more easy."
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Quote collection
Rebecca West quotes (page 5 of 11)
213 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The general tendency [is] to be censorious of the vices to which one has not been tempted."
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"I cannot think that espionage can be recommended as a technique for building an impressive civilization. It's a lout's game."
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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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"It seemed a good idea at the time."
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"The word 'idiot' comes from a Greek root meaning private person. Idiocy is the female defect: intent on their private lives, women follow their fate through a darkness deep as that cast by malformed cells in the brain. It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy: men are so obsessed by public affairs that they see the world as by moonlight, which shows the outlines of every object but not the details indicative of their nature."
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"Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted."
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"Any writer worth his salt knows that only a small proportion of literature does nore than partly compensate people for the damage they have suffered in learning to read."
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"I do not think women understand how repelled a man feels when he sees a woman wholly absorbed in what she is thinking, unless it is about her child, or her husband, or her lover. It ... gives one gooseflesh."
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"Music is part of human life and partakes of the human tragedy. There is much more music in the world than is allowed to change into heard sounds and prove its point."
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"Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization. ... The first thing a woman does when she gets a little money into her hands is to hire some other poor wretch to do her housework."
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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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"I really write to find out what I know about something and what is to be known about something."
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"I don't believe that to understand is necessarily to pardon, but I feel that to understand makes one forget that one cannot pardon."
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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."
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"It would be no loss to the world if most of the writers now writing had been strangled at birth."
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"I always have beauty around me, for I have but to go to my piano, and trace one of the million designs that have been made by my masters."
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"The earth itself is slightly resistant to routine."
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"We think in youth that our bodies are identical to ourselves and have the same interests, but discover later in life that they are heartless companions who have been accidentally yoked with us, and who are as likely as not, in our extreme sickness or old age, to treat us with less mercy than we would have received at the hands of the worst bandits."
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"There is a point, and it is reached more easily than is supposed, where interference with freedom of the arts and literature becomes an attack on the life of society."
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