Rebecca West Quotes

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Rebecca West

Profession : Author

Birth : December 21, 1892

International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge.

Rebecca West

Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one's own Trojan horse.

Rebecca West

The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.

Rebecca West

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

Rebecca West

I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

Rebecca West

Journalism: an ability to meet the challenge of filling the space.

Rebecca West

He is every other inch a gentleman.

Rebecca West

It is always one's virtues and not one's vices that precipitate one into disaster.

Rebecca West

Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.

Rebecca West

Nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.

Rebecca West

People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

Rebecca West

Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.

Rebecca West

A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample.

Rebecca West

There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.

Rebecca West

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.

Rebecca West

Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.

Rebecca West

Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts.

Rebecca West

It is the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.

Rebecca West

Humanity is never more sphinxlike than when it is expressing itself.

Rebecca West

The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.

Rebecca West