Getting a divorce is nearly always as cheerful and useful an occupation as breaking valuable china. Rebecca West More Quotes by Rebecca West More Quotes From Rebecca West ... it is nearly impossible to understand those who are beyond our sight, who are not explained to us by ties of birth or the contact of the flesh. Rebecca West understandingtiessight A great many quite good plays could be performed with rhythmic howls in the place of dialogue and lose almost nothing by the change. Rebecca West changeplaydrama 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. Rebecca West cuttinggriefgrace [The satirist] must fully possess, at least in the world of the imagination, the quality the lack of which he is deriding in others. Rebecca West qualityimaginationworld It would be no loss to the world if most of the writers now writing had been strangled at birth. Rebecca West would-belosswriting the bad is more easily perceived than the good. A fresh lobster does not give such pleasure to the consumer as a stale one will give him pain. Rebecca West painevilgiving International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge. Rebecca West gesturesinternationalimperfect She did not suddenly start being disagreeable this afternoon, she was so good at it, she had evidently practised whatever are the scales and arpeggios of rudeness every day of her life. Rebecca West rudenessafternoonscales Were I to go down into the market-place, armed with the powers of witchcraft, and take a peasant by the shoulders and whisper to him, 'In your lifetime, have you known peace?' wait for his answer, shake his shoulders and transform him into his father, and ask him the same question, and transform him in his turn to his father, I would never hear the word 'Yes,' if I carried my questioning of the dead back for a thousand years. I would always hear, 'No, there was fear, there were our enemies without, our rulers within, there was prison, there was torture, there was violent death. Rebecca West waitingfatheryears The adventure is over. Everything gets over, and nothing is ever enough. Except the part you carry with you. Rebecca West get-overenoughadventure It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth. Rebecca West racewritinghistory Women know the damnation of charity because the habit of civilization has always been to throw them cheap alms rather than give them good wages. Rebecca West justicegivingcivilization Those who foresee the future and recognize it as tragic are often seized upon by a madness which forced them to commit the very acts which make it certain that what they dread will happen. Rebecca West futuremadnesscertain 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. Rebecca West good-lifebiographiesfiction Of Virginia Woolf: The talent of this generation which is most certain of survival. Rebecca West this-generationvirginiasurvival Time spent in a casino is time given to death, a foretaste of the hour when one's flesh will be diverted to the purposes of the worm and not of the will. Rebecca West gamblingpurposeflesh 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. Rebecca West later-in-lifehandsthinking 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. Rebecca West reformmencivilization It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk. Rebecca West smelldifferenceshistory One was kind, out of a bounty that could hardly be exhausted, to old governesses and gardeners, who could be relied upon to give thanks with proper abjection; one performed public duties, for which one was paid in full by deference; one was chaste, refusing to run away from one's husband with other men who for the most part did not ask one to do so, and who in any case had nothing better to offer than one's own home. Knowing no difficulties one was without fortitude; knowing no criteria but one's own achievements one was without taste. Rebecca West husbandhomerunning
