A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere.
Rebecca WestRead
Birds sat on the telegraph wires that spanned the river as the black notes sit on a staff of music.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote draws a parallel between birds on wires and musical notes on a staff, highlighting the beauty and harmony found in nature and music.
Rebecca West's quote suggests a deep connection between the natural world and the world of music. The imagery of birds sitting on telegraph wires, akin to musical notes on a staff, evokes a sense of harmony and balance. This illustrates how both elements can coexist beautifully, reflecting the rhythm of life and the interconnectedness of different art forms. It poetically emphasizes that just as music can evoke emotions and tell stories, so too can nature in its own way.
Themes
BirdsMusicHarmonyNatureArt
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the beauty of nature.
More from Rebecca West
All quotes →works of art feel towards human beings exactly as we do towards ghosts. The transparency of spectres, the diffuseness in space which lets them drift through doors and walls, and their smell of death, disgust us not more than we disgust works of art by our meaninglessness, our diffuseness in time which lets us drift through three score years and ten without a quarter as much significance as a picture establishes instantaneously.
Rebecca WestRead
I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the people we meet?
Rebecca WestRead
All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.
Rebecca WestRead
It's my profession to bring people from various outlying districts of the mind to the normal. There seems to be a general feeling it's the place where they ought to be. Sometimes I don't see the urgency myself.
Rebecca WestRead
God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.
Rebecca WestRead
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