Quotes from Rebecca West

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.

Her question made me remember that 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: they 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.

Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts. But it is also in terror, because those values are threatened, and it is not certain whether they will triumph in this world, and of course music is a missionary effort to colonise earth for imperialistic heaven.

He is in his late sixties, but has the charm of extreme youth, for he comes to a pleasure and hails it happily for what it is without any bitterness accumulated from past disappointments, and he believes that any moment the whole process of life may make a slight switch-over and that everything will be agreeable for ever. His manners would satisfy the standards of any capital in the world, but at the same time he is exquisitely, pungently local.

I hate the corpses of empires, they stink as nothing else. They stink so badly that I cannot believe that even in life they were healthy.

A city that had learned to make good bread had learned to make good cake also. A city that built itself up by good sense and industry had formed a powerful secondary intention of elegance.

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.

On Jane Austen] She was fully possessed of the idealism which is a necessary ingredient of the great satirist. If she criticized the institutions of earth, it was because she had very definite ideas regarding the institutions of heaven.

She was repulsively furred with neglect and poverty, as even a good glove that has dropped down behind a bed in a hotel and has lain undisturbed for a day or two is repulsive when the chambermaid retrieves it from the dust and fluff.

That taught me a lesson I've always found it useful to remember if I have to deal with difficult men. When they are hard, they are probably dealing with things they do not understand. If one brings them back to what is familiar to them, they become soft.

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

I prayed and read the Bible, but I couldn't get any help. You don't notice how little there is in the Bible really till you go to it for help.

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

Here was the authentic voice of the Slav. These people hold that the way to make life better is to add good things to it, whereas in the West we hold that the way to make life better is to take bad things away from it.

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

It appeared possible that these other men were good fathers only because they knew too little of the world to grow frenzied against it.

Every home is, and should be, unique. Your habits, dreams, family, and hobbies are personal to you, and ideally your space reflects and supports your unique style. There are not rules for setting up your home; it just has to work for you. (Happy Starts at Home: Getting the Life You Want by Changing the Space You've Got, Rebecca West)

I was like a sea pulled by two moons. This must mean a boiling of the waters, tides that rushed up and carried away structures meant for living in, and then receded till earth that should be covered lay naked.

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)

is your home a good housemate? (Happy Starts at Home: Getting the Life You Want by Changing the Space You've Got, Rebecca West)

In any class I feel at home, and I am never accepted, because of the traces I bear of my other origins. This does not, instance by instance, cause me any pain, but my experience of rejection has been an agony.

What a gamble it is to have children!

What would the United States be like if it had not those reservoirs of triumphant will-power, the historical facts of the War of Independence, of the giant American statesmen, and of the pioneering progress into the West, which every American citizen has at his mental command and into which he can plunge for revivification at any minute? To have a difficult history makes, perhaps, a people who are bound to be difficult in any conditions, lacking these means of refreshment.

So, where does all that stuff come from? It comes from three main sources: stuff is bought and kept out of fear; stuff is collected and kept out of love. And stuff is kept and multiplied out of habit (Happy Starts at Home: Getting the Life You Want by Changing the Space You've Got, Rebecca West)