Quotes by Rebecca West

“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people”

“My idea of feminism is self-determination, and its very open-ended: every woman has the right to become herself, and do whatever she needs to do.”

“Well-behaved women rarely make history”

“Does being a feminist mean that I believe that Im as good as any man? Yes.”

“I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect”

“A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime”

“The business of an orthodox preacher is about as successful as that of a celluloid dog chasing an asbestos cat through hell”

“When youre special to a cat, youre special indeed...she brings to you the gift of her preference of you, the sight of you, the sound of your voice, the touch of your hand.”

“March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on lifes path.”

“Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.”

“A cat pours his body on the floor like water. It is restful just to see him.”

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.

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.

Yes,” said Mamma, “this is the worst of life, that love does not give us common sense but is a sure way of losing it. We love people, and we say that we are going to do more for them than friendship, but it makes such fools of us that we do far less, indeed sometimes what we do could be mistaken for the work of hatred.

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

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, or a prostitute.

Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted. If one’s own existence has no form, if its events do not come handily to mind and disclose their significance, we feel about ourselves as if we were reading a bad book.

Art covers not even a corner of life, only a knot or two here and there, far apart and without relation to the pattern. How could we hope that it would ever bring order and beauty to the whole of that vast and intractable fabric, that sail flapping in the contrary winds of the universe?

I had come to Yugoslavia to see what history meant in flesh and blood.

[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.