"Now, why did Kitty, who was the falsest thing on earth, who was in tune with every kind of falsity, by merely suffering somehow remind us of reality? Why did her tears reveal to me what I had learned ..."
- Rebecca West
"To be afraid of sorrow is to be afraid of joy also."
"She understood children, and knew that they were adults handicapped by a humiliating disguise and had their adult qualities within them."
"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."
"I will believe that the battle of feminism is over, and that the female has reached a position of equality with the male, when I hear that a country has allowed itself to be turned upside-..."
"People call me a feminist whenever I express statements that distinguish me from a doormat."
"Indeed, grief is not the clear melancholy the young believe it. It is like a siege in a tropical city. The skin dries and the throat parches as though one were living in the heat of the desert; water ..."
"Through this evening of sentences cut short because their completed meaning was always sorrow, of normal life dissolved to tears, the chords of Beethoven sounded serenely."
"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 c..."
"Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul."