Rebecca West Quotes

There is not the smallest reason for confounding nationalism, which is the desire of a people to be itself, with imperialism, which is the desire of a people to prevent other peoples from being themselves.

You should smile at that,’ he said. ‘There is a Yiddish word, schlemiel, a man who falls over everything, who buys brass for gold. There should be a goy word for the elegant schlemiel, who has been born to handle gold but never knows it from brass and calls it gold with the weight of authority, who falls over everything but does it with such assurance that the fall is taken for a curtsy.

but it is not what one does so much as the way that while one does it time runs past forever.

Decidedly we shall not be safe if we forget the things of the mind. Indeed, if we want to save our souls, the mind must lead a more athletic life than it has ever done before, and must more passionately than ever practice and rejoice in art. For only through art can we cultivate annoyance with inessentials, powerful and exasperated reactions against ugliness, a ravenous appetite for beauty; and these are the true guardians of the soul.

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.

L'indifferenza significa che gli occhi non hanno più bisogno di cercarsi, le mani di protendersi; né le labbra di unirsi, perché è un'unione in cui non ci si accorge più della separazione dei corpi.

It's important that we clearly defined what we need from our home so we don't get distracted by what someone else might want if it were their home.

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

It struck her that the difference between men and women is the rock on which civilization will split before it can reach any goal that could justify its expenditure of effort.

God, what a life this is,” he said, “full of presciences that don't do us any good, full of self-consciousness that tortures us by telling us just what sort of hole we’re in, but never how to get out of it.

When we talked to them we always expressed the love we felt for them and never made the chilling remarks which the part of us undesirous of friendship sometimes tricked us into making to those who might possibly have become our friends.

I am writing all this down in full knowledge that it will not now seem important, for the reason that that is just what marks off that past from our present. Everything was then of importance. Everything enjoyable had an equal value. In life we were not divided. Life itself was not divided.

What is all that stuff in your home, anyway? Imagine that I said you could buy as many new clothes as you wanted, but you could never, ever take off anything you'd already purchased. In no time you'd be wearing so much clothing that it would be hard to walk. You'd feel hot and irritable, and be unable to do anything well. That's what the stuff in our homes can be like. If we shop and collect, but never decrease or declutter, the accumulation of stuff is a burden.

Every item rents a space in your heart and in your brain. If there is too much stuff, then you have little room for new fun, new love, or new anything. So let's take a look at what is really in your home. Where did all that furniture, decor, and stuff come from? Why is it in your life, and what purpose does it serve? What feeling are associated with each object?

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

Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted.

What a gamble it is to have children!

But our grief was useless. Salt water, spilled on the ground, does not feed what grows there, but kills it.