Rebecca West quotes

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat. (Rebecca West)
Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology. View quote
Rebecca West
The point is that nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth. View quote
Rebecca West
It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion. View quote
Rebecca West
Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves. View quote
Rebecca West
There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all. View quote
Rebecca West
Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one's own Trojan horse. View quote
Rebecca West
God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide. View quote
Rebecca West
The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple. View quote
Rebecca West
Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience. View quote
Rebecca West
People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute. (Rebecca West)
The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots. View quote
Rebecca West
Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul. View quote
Rebecca West
You must always believe that life is as extraordinary as music says it is. View quote
Rebecca West
The American struggle for the vote was much more difficult than the English for the simple reason that it was much more easy. View quote
Rebecca West
Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts. View quote
Rebecca West
Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is. View quote
Rebecca West
All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears. View quote
Rebecca West
There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time. View quote
Rebecca West
I do not myself find it agreeable to be 90, and I cannot imagine why it should seem so to other people. It is not that you have any fears about your own death, it is that your upholstery is already dead around you. View quote
Rebecca West
But just as it sometimes happens that the most temperate people, who have never acquired the habit of drinking alcohol, or even a taste for it, are tormented by the fear that somehow or other they will one day find themselves drunk, so Isabelle perpetually feared that she might be betrayed into an impulsive act that was destructive to such order as reason had imposed on life. Therefore she was forever running her faculty of analysis over in her mind with the preposterous zeal of an adolescent running a razor over his beardless chin. (Rebecca West)
After any disturbance (such as two world wars coinciding with a period of growing economic and monetary incomprehensibility) we find our old concepts inadequate and look for new ones. But it unfortunately happens that the troubled times which produce an appetite for new ideas are the least propitious for clear thinking. View quote
Rebecca West
There is one common condition for the lot of women in Western civilization and all other civilizations that we know about for certain, and that is, woman as a sex is disliked and persecuted, while as an individual she is liked, loved, and even, with reasonable luck, sometimes worshipped. View quote
Rebecca West
Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind. View quote
Rebecca West
There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence. View quote
Rebecca West