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Vera Brittain

Vera Brittain Quotes

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Famous Vera Brittain Quotes

“Men as a rule do everything at women's expense, from their first day to the last. They come into the world at our expense, and at our expense they're able to do whatever work they please uninterrupted. We keep their homes pleasant fro them and provide them with all creature comforts, We satisfy both their loves and their lusts, and at our expense again they have the children they desire. When they's ill we nurse them; they recover at our expense; and when they die, we lay them out and see that they leave the world respectably. If ever we can get anything out of them, or use them in any way that make things the least bit more even, it's not only our right to do it, it's a duty we owe to ourselves." [...]"really Virginia, to hear you talk one would think you'd suffered a dreadful injury at the hands of some man or other- and yet you're always telling me that all your best friends were men until the war came". "So they were," said Virginia. "but all my friends were absolute exceptions to the general run of men".”

MenFriendshipFeminismMen And WomenWorld War OneVera BrittainSocial ConventionsThe Dark Time
Book:The Dark Tide
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“For a woman as for a man, marriage might enormously help or devastatingly hinder the growth of her power to contribute something impersonally valuable to the community in which she lived, but it was not that power, and could not be regarded as an end in itself. Nor, even, were children ends in themselves; it was useless to go on producing human beings merely in order that they, in their sequence, might produce others, and never turn from this business of continuous procreation to the accomplishment of some definite and lasting piece of work.”

MenHumansChildrenEndsHelpingMightOrderTurnsGrowthCommunityHuman BeingsPiecesProduceGoes OnValuableUselessAccomplishmentLastingDefiniteSequenceBeing MeHinderProcreation
Book:Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study Of The Years 1900-1925
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“I don't think victory over death... is anything so superficial as a person fulfilling their normal span of life. It can be twofold; a victory over death by the man who faces it for himself without fear, and a victory by those who, loving him, know that death is but a little thing compared with the fact that he lived and was the kind of person he was.”

ThinkingKnowsMenKindLittlesPersonsFactsFacesHe ManVictoryNormalLittle ThingsFulfillingSuperficialLoving Him
Book:Selected letters of Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain, 1920-1935
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