Rebecca West Quotes (46 Quotes)


    Right now, the water just looks dirty, but it is safe.

    Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

    Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.

    Now different races and nationalities cherish different ideals of society that stink in each other's nostrils with an offensiveness beyond the power of any but the most monstrous private deed.

    But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example.


    God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.

    Mr. James Joyce is a great man who is entirely without taste.

    Nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.

    She saw she had fallen into the hands of one of those doctors who have strayed too far from apparent in the direction of the soul.

    Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.

    The fear of life which is the beginning of all evil....

    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.

    I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

    Journalism: an ability to meet the challenge of filling the space.

    The memory, experiencing and re-experiencing, has such power over one's mere personal life, that one has merely lived.

    Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one's own Trojan horse.

    Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.

    It is always one's virtues and not one's vices that precipitate one into disaster.

    There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.

    There is no wider gulf in the universe than yawns between those on the hither and thither side of vital experience.

    Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is.


    It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.

    All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears.

    I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the people we meet?

    Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.

    She was like the embodiment of all women who have felt an astonished protest because their children have died before them.

    There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.

    Humanity is never more sphinxlike than when it is expressing itself.

    Men must be capable of imagining and executing and insisting on social change if they are to reform or even maintain civilization, and capable too of furnishing the rebellion which is sometimes necessary if society is not to perish of immobility.


    All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.

    Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts.

    International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge.

    The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.

    It is the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.

    A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample.

    We all drew on the comfort which is given out by the major works of Mozart, which is as real and material as the warmth given up by a glass of brandy.

    Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.

    The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.

    The American struggle for the vote was much more difficult than the English for the simple reason that it was much more easy.

    There is in every one of us an unending see-saw between the will to live and the will to die.


    A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere.

    In England and America a beard usually means that its owner would rather be considered venerable than virile on the continent of Europe it often means that its owner makes a special claim to virility.

    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.


    More Rebecca West Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Life - Man - Art - Soul - Journalism - Sense & Perception - Rebellion - Feminism - Space - Abilities - Society & Civilization - Writing - Experience - Music - Water - Desire - Memory - Birds - Humanity - View All Rebecca West Quotations

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