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
I had come to Yugoslavia to see what history meant in flesh and blood.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a desire to experience history in a tangible way rather than just as abstract knowledge.
Rebecca West expresses the significance of understanding history through direct, personal experiences. By visiting Yugoslavia, she aims to connect with the past on a deeper level, seeing how historical events have shaped real people and their lives, rather than merely learning about them in books.
Themes
HistoryExperienceMemoryLearningPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on the importance of experiential learning, one might reference Rebecca West's journey to Yugoslavia.
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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