The mind is its own enemy, that fights itself with the innumerable pliant and ineluctable arms of the octopus.
Rebecca WestOnce a secret society establishes itself within an open society, there is no end to the hideous mistrust it must cause.
Rebecca WestIf there is to be any romance in marriage woman must be given every chance to earn a decent living at other occupations. Otherwise no man can be sure that he is loved for himself alone, and that his wife did not come to the Registry Office because she had no luck at the Labour Exchange.
Rebecca WestThe 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.
Rebecca WestThere are acacias, a graceful species amusingly devitalized by sentimentality, this kind drooping its leaves with the grace of a young widow bowed in controllable grief, this one obscuring them with a smooth silver as of placid tears. They please, like the minor French novelists of the eighteenth century, by suggesting a universe in which nothing cuts deep.
Rebecca West