WIST Quotations

West, Rebecca -- “Mr. Chesterton in Hysterics,” The Clarion (14 Nov 1913)

Dave — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 14:07:51 +0000

I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

Rebecca West (1892-1983) British author, journalist, literary critic, travel writer [pseud. for Cicily Isabel Fairfield]
“Mr. Chesterton in Hysterics,” The Clarion (14 Nov 1913)
(Source)

West, Rebecca -- “Pleasure Be Your Guide,” The Nation, “Living Philosophies” series #10 (25 Feb 1939)

Dave — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 16:21:23 +0000

I have no faith in the sense of comforting beliefs which persuade me that all my troubles are blessings in disguise.

Rebecca West (1892-1983) British author, journalist, literary critic, travel writer [pseud. for Cicily Isabel Fairfield]
“Pleasure Be Your Guide,” The Nation, “Living Philosophies” series #10 (25 Feb 1939)
(Source)

Adapted into Clifton Fadiman, I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Certain Eminent Men and Women of Our Time (1952)

West, Rebecca -- “Pleasure Be Your Guide,” The Nation, “Living Philosophies” series #10 (25 Feb 1939)

Dave — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 15:01:47 +0000

The belief that all higher life is governed by the idea of renunciation poisons our moral life by engendering vanity and egotism. But if we take gratification as our ideal we thereby impose on ourselves a program of self-restraint; for if we claim that we are under the necessity of learning all that we can about reality, and that we learn most through pleasure, we must also admit that we are under the necessity of hearing what our fellow-creatures learn about it and of working out a system by which we will curb our pleasures so that they do not interfere with those of others. If, however, we claim that it is by renunciation that we achieve wisdom, we have no logical reason for feeling any disapproval of conditions that thrust pain and deprivation on others.

West, Rebecca -- “Pleasure Be Your Guide,” The Nation, “Living Philosophies” series #10 (25 Feb 1939)

Dave — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 15:48:01 +0000

But indeed we need no further argument in favor of taking pleasure as a standard when we consider the only alternative that faces us. If we do not live for pleasure we shall soon find ourselves living for pain. If we do not regard as sacred our own joys and the joys of others, we open the door and let into life the ugliest attribute of the human race, which is cruelty.

West, Rebecca -- “Pleasure Be Your Guide,” The Nation, “Living Philosophies” series #10 (25 Feb 1939)

Dave — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 15:21:29 +0000

Out of instinct for self-preservation, and logically enough, [the mind] asks, “If it is a good and holy thing to be punished, must it not also be a good and holy thing to punish?” It answers that it is; and our earth becomes the hell it is. Thus we human beings plant in ourselves the perennial blossom of cruelty — the conviction that if we hurt other people we are doing good to ourselves and to life in general.

West, Rebecca -- “Pleasure Be Your Guide,” The Nation, “Living Philosophies” series #10 (25 Feb 1939)

Dave — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 15:29:15 +0000

Christ by his crucifixion demonstrated exactly what the assault of cruelty on the innocent means; and the subsequent services devised by the early church commemorated the beauty of the virtue that was slain and the beastliness shown by the slayer, and reiterated the warning that this was the kind of crime man was inherently likely to commit unless he watched himself. There could be no more proper medicine for the human disease. But the church has poured as much of the draft as possible down the drain by its attempts to account for the crucifixion of Christ as an atonement for the sins of man instead of a demonstration of them.

West, Rebecca -- “The Gospel According to Granville-Parker,” The Freewoman (7 Mar 1912)

Dave — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 12:51:42 +0000

When a little child hears a pleasant sound, it cries, “Again! again!” But soon mere repetition fails to satisfy. The child imitates the sound, and that fails, too. At last it achieves happiness in the creation of a new sound. Older children always sit down to paint or write after they have seen a picture or read a story that appeals to them, and attempt to create. So life ought to be a struggle of desire towards adventures whose nobility will fertilise the soul and lead to the conception of new, glorious things. To avoid the ordeal of emotion that leads to the conception is the impulse of death. Sterility is the deadly sin.

Rebecca West (1892-1983) British author, journalist, literary critic, travel writer [pseud. for Cicily Isabel Fairfield]
“The Gospel According to Granville-Parker,” The Freewoman (7 Mar 1912)
(Source)

Re-published in The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17 (1982).

West, Rebecca -- “The Necessity and Grandeur of the International Ideal” (1934)

Dave — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 14:00:36 +0000

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.

Rebecca West (1892-1983) British author, journalist, literary critic, travel writer [pseud. for Cicily Isabel Fairfield]
“The Necessity and Grandeur of the International Ideal” (1934)
(Source)

West, Rebecca -- “There Is No Conversation,” The Saturday Evening Post (1928-12-08)

Dave — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 14:48:36 +0000

There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all. We speak; we spread round us with sounds, with words, an emanation from ourselves. Sometimes they overlap the circles that others are spreading round themselves. Then they are affected by these other circles, to be sure, but not because of any real communication that has taken place — merely as a scarf of blue chiffon lying on a woman’s dressing table will change color if she casts down on it a scarf of red chiffon.

Rebecca West (1892-1983) British author, journalist, literary critic, travel writer [pseud. for Cicily Isabel Fairfield]
“There Is No Conversation,” The Saturday Evening Post (1928-12-08)
(Source)

In the initial magazine appearance, the third sentence read, "There are interesting monologues." When reprinted in The Harsh Voice: Four Short Novels (1935), and subsequently, interesting was replaced with intersecting.

More discussion about this quotation: There Is No Such Thing as Conversation. It Is an Illusion. There Are Intersecting Monologues, That Is All – Quote Investigator®.

West, Rebecca -- “World of Books: The Greek Way,” Sunday Times of London (23 Aug 1942)

Dave — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 22:27:42 +0000

A good cause has to be careful of the company it keeps.

Rebecca West (1892-1983) British author, journalist, literary critic, travel writer [pseud. for Cicily Isabel Fairfield]
“World of Books: The Greek Way,” Sunday Times of London (23 Aug 1942)

West, Rebecca -- Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Prologue (1941)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

The word “idiot” comes from a Greek root meaning private person. Idiocy is the female defect: intent on their private lives, women follow their fate through a darkness deep as that cast by malformed cells in the brain. It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy: men are so obsessed by public affairs that they see the world as by moonlight, which shows the outlines of every object but not the details indicative of their nature.

Rebecca West (1892-1983) British author, journalist, literary critic, travel writer [pseud. for Cicily Isabel Fairfield]
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Prologue (1941)
(Source)

Sometimes oddly paraphrased, "The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots."

West, Rebecca -- The Meaning of Treason, Epilogue (1947)

Dave — Thu, 06 Jan 2022 17:24:22 +0000

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

Rebecca West (1892-1983) British author, journalist, literary critic, travel writer [pseud. for Cicily Isabel Fairfield]
The Meaning of Treason, Epilogue (1947)
(Source)

West, Rebecca -- The Thinking Reed, ch. 7 (1936)

Dave — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 14:51:44 +0000

These women were fatuous with a fatuity which had threatened her all her life, as it threatened all people of means, and which was of mournful significance for humanity in general, since it proved the emptiness of one of man’s most reasonable expectations. No more sensible form of government could be imagined than aristocracy. If certain able stocks in the community were able to amass enough wealth to give their descendants beautiful houses to grow up in, the widest opportunities of education, complete economic security, so that they need never be influenced by mercenary considerations, and easy access to any public form of work they chose to undertake — why, then, the community had a race of perfect governors ready made.

Only, as the Lauristons showed, the process worked out wholly different in practice. There came to these selected stocks a deadly, ungrateful complacence, which made them count these opportunities as their achievements, and belittle everybody else’s achievements unless they were similarly confused with opportunities; and which did worse than this, by abolishing all standards from their minds except what they themselves were and did.

Rebecca West (1892-1983) British author, journalist, literary critic, travel writer [pseud. for Cicily Isabel Fairfield]
The Thinking Reed, ch. 7 (1936)

West, Rebecca -- This Real Night (1984)

Dave — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 17:33:19 +0000

“What, did St. Francis preach to the birds?” asked Kate. “Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to cats.”

Rebecca West (1892-1983) British author, journalist, literary critic, travel writer [pseud. for Cicily Isabel Fairfield]
This Real Night (1984)
(Source)

West, Rebecca -- In The Sunday Telegraph, London (1981)

Dave — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 18:35:31 +0000

After any disturbance (such as two world wars coinciding with a period of growing economic and monetary incomprehensibility) we find our old concepts inadequate and look for new ones. But it unfortunately happens that the troubled times which produce an appetite for new ideas are the least propitious for clear thinking.

Rebecca West (1892-1983) British author, journalist, literary critic, travel writer [pseud. for Cicily Isabel Fairfield]
In The Sunday Telegraph, London (1981)
(Source)