Rebecca West World Quotations

[The satirist] must fully possess, at least in the world of the imagination, the quality the lack of which he is deriding in others.

The Portrait of a Lady is entirely successful in giving one the sense of having met somebody far too radiantly good for this world.

Like all bad drivers, he thought he was the best driver in the world. [husband Henry Andrews]

The principle of avoiding the unnecessary expenditure of energy has enabled the species to survive in a world full of stimuli; but it prevents the survival of the aristocracy.

It would be no loss to the world if most of the writers now writing had been strangled at birth.

Music is part of human life and partakes of the human tragedy. There is much more music in the world than is allowed to change into heard sounds and prove its point.

To every man in the world there is one person of whom he knows little: whom he would never recognize if he met him walking down the street, whose motives are a mystery to him. That is himself.

Sex, which ought to be an incident of life, is the obsession of the well-fed world.