It is the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion. - 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
I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute. - Rebecca West
It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk. - Rebecca West
Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology. - Rebecca West
There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence. - Rebecca West
There is in every one of us an unending see-saw between the will to live and the will to die. - Rebecca West
Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves. - Rebecca West
A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample. - Rebecca West
Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul. - Rebecca West
Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is. - Rebecca West
Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind. - Rebecca West
The memory, experiencing and re-experiencing, has such power over one's mere personal life, that one has merely lived. - Rebecca West
International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge. - Rebecca West
Nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth. - 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
God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide. - Rebecca West
All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears. - Rebecca West
The American struggle for the vote was much more difficult than the English for the simple reason that it was much more easy. - Rebecca West
There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all. - Rebecca West
There is no wider gulf in the universe than yawns between those on the hither and thither side of vital experience. - Rebecca West
But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example. - 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
A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere. - Rebecca West