Rebecca West Quotes

That shows how impossible it is to be a woman. One's whole life depends on one's looks but one mayn't speak of one's own beauty

So I went out alone into a soft day, with the dispelled winter lurking above in high dark clouds under which there ran quick fresh currents of air, and broken shafts of insistent sunshine that spread a grey clarity of light in which every colour showed sharp and strong.:

There is, of course, no reason for the existence of the male sex except that sometimes one needs help with moving the piano.

It was one of those autumn mornings which are devoid of melancholy, when the weather seems to be cleaning its house. A broom of wind sent the clouds above flying briskly and kept the fallen leaves scudding along the pavements, the trees looked as if they were being stripped to let the rains get at them better.

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.

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.

Now, what class of actions always appear to us as automatic and neutral, inevitable and therefore exempt from censure? Our own. We always believe that what we did we had to do. Other men have free will, we ourselves live in a determined universe. And though we may know everything about our actions, how they are carried out and what results followed, we cannot know them for what they are, as we know that a rose is red and is scented, a plate of soup brown and hot and made of beans. Each man is a mystery to himself.

Time, I saw, was the fault of the universe, and because of it grief and expectation, equally mischievous, would prevent us having peace to watch the present.

I find that this always happens when I try to interrupt Slavs who are quarreling. They draw all the energy out of the air by the passion of their debate, so that anything outside its orbit can only flutter trivially.

"who" is your home? Your home is so much more than just an impersonal roof over your head. In fact, the personality of your home "lives with you" and influences you as much as the actual people and pets that share your space. That means it's important to figure out just "who" it is you are living with. So If your home were a persona that woke up next to you every day, stood in the kitchen each morning when you poured your first cup of coffee and waited at the front door when you arrived, who would it be? For me, my home is like a best friend who waits for me at the front door with cookies and flowers, and who greets me in the kitchen with a cheery "Good morning." Nice, eh?

(Happy Starts at Home: Getting the Life You Want by Changing the Space You've Got, Rebecca West)

It’s funny – you Irish are so like the Serbs.

It would seem … that man has been shocked by the war into forgetting how to be a political animal. This suspicion is confirmed by the spread of Fascism, which is a headlong flight into fantasy from the necessity for political thought. There is nothing more obvious about the post-war situation than that it is novel, springs from causes which have not yet been analysed, and cannot be relieved until this analysis is complete and has been made the basis of a new social formula. Yet persons supporting Fascism behave as if man were already in possession of principles which would enable him to deal with all our problems, and as if it were only a question of appointing a dictator to apply them.

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

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

"I realized that if I had said to them, "You had that young man turned out of the carriage because he had a second-class ticket," they would have nodded and said, "Yes," and if I had gone on and said, "But you yourselves have only second-class tickets," they would not have seen that the second statement had any bearing on the first; and I cannot picture to myself the mental life of people who cannot perceive that connexion."