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Rebecca West

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Famous Rebecca West Quotes

“For some reason a nation feels as shy about admitting that it ever went forth to war for the sake of more wealth as a man would about admitting that he had accepted an invitation just for the sake of the food. This is one of humanity's most profound imbecilities, as perhaps the only justification for asking one's fellowmen to endure the horrors of war would be the knowledge that if they did not fight they would starve.”

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Book:The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews
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“... when the Spaniards persecuted heretics they may have been crude, but they were not being unreasonable or unpractical. They were at least wiser than the people of to-day who pretend that it does not matter what a man believes, as who should say that the flavour and digestibility of a pudding will have nothing to do with its ingredients.”

PeopleMenShouldBelieveMayDoeHas BeensIdeasMatterIngredientsWiserHeresyCrudeUnreasonableHereticPersecutedPuddingFlavourSpaniardsSpanish Inquisition
Book:The strange necessity: essays by Rebecca West
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“The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians; and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne.”

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Book:The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews
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“No one can write a best-seller by taking thought. The slightest touch of insincerity blurs its appeal. The writer who keeps his tongue in his cheek, who knows that he is writing for fools and that, therefore, he had better write like a fool, makes a respectable living out of serials and novelettes; but he will never make the vast, the blaring, half a million success. That comes of blended sincerity and vitality.”

KnowsWritingHalfFictionMillionsFoolTongueAppealsSincerityCheeksVitalityRespectableSerialsBlurSellersInsincerityBest Sellers
Author:Rebecca West
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“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige throughbeing mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”

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Book:The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews
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“There are acacias, a graceful species amusingly devitalized by sentimentality, this kind drooping its leaves with the grace of a young widow bowed in controllable grief, this one obscuring them with a smooth silver as of placid tears. They please, like the minor French novelists of the eighteenth century, by suggesting a universe in which nothing cuts deep.”

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Book:The strange necessity: essays by Rebecca West
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“... A La Recherche du Temps Perdu is like a beautiful hand with long fingers reaching out to pluck a perfect fruit, without error,for the accurate eye knows well it is growing just there on the branch, while Ulysses is the fumbling of a horned hand in darkness after a doubted jewel.”

KnowsWellsLongHandsEyeBeautifulPerfectDarknessGrowingErrorsFingersFruitBranchesReachingReach OutAccurateJewelsDoubtedPluckUlysses
Book:The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews
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“Good God enlighten us! Which of these two belongs to the sterner sex - the man who sits in Whitehall all his life on a comfortable salary, or the woman who has to keep her teeth bared lest she has her meatless bone of 17s. 4d. a week snatched away from her and who has to produce the next generation on her off-days?”

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Book:The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West 1911-17
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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.”

MenWorldPersonsShowsBrainDarknessFateObjectsFemaleRootsMalesAffairCastsDetailsCellsIdiotGreekObsessedDefectsMoonlightPrivate LifeOutlinesIdiocyLunacyPublic Affairs
Book:Black lamb and grey falcon: a journey through Yugoslavia
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“Margaret Thatcher has one great advantage - she is a daughter of the people and looks trim, as the daughter of the people desire to be. Shirley Williams has such an advantage over her because she's a member of the upper-middle class and can achieve the kitchen-sink revolutionary look that one cannot get unless one has been to a really good school.”

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Author:Rebecca West
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