Rebecca West

More from Rebecca West

• There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.

  The Harsh Voice: Four Short Novels (1935)

  • Talking

• 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.

  “Mr. Chesterton in Hysterics,” in The Clarion, (14 November 1913), re-published in The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17 (1982), p. 219

  • Women

• Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.

  Letter (20 August 1959), as quoted in Victoria Glendinning, Rebecca West: A Life (1987), Part 5, Chapter 8, p. 206

  • Family

All 6 quotes from Rebecca West

Popular quotes

• No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.

  John Donne1572–1631No Man Is an Island (1624), Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624), Meditation 17In context

• I came, I saw, I conquered.

  Julius Caesar100–44 BCInscription on the triumphal wagon reported in The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, as translated by Robert Graves (1957).

  • Success

• The unexamined life is not worth living.

  Socrates470–399 BCThe Apology of Socrates (399 BC)

  • Philosophy