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
Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life should be about pursuing noble adventures that enrich our inner selves.
Rebecca West suggests that life's purpose lies in the quest for meaningful experiences and adventures that elevate our spirit and growth. This struggle driven by desire fosters personal enrichment, indicating that worthwhile pursuits can lead to a more fulfilling existence.
Themes
LifeAdventureNobilitySoulStruggle
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about following one's dreams.
More from Rebecca West
All quotes βworks 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
Similar quotes
Dreaming is the poetry of Life, and we must be forgiven if we indulge in it a little.
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I am busier now than I ever imagined I would be, but I feel blessed in that I have found what I am supposed to be doing with my life. It's wonderful to tell stories and have people listen to them.
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Life should be lived to the point of tears
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If you *stop* putting off homemaking until your hope of marriage develops into a reality, and *start* to develop an interesting home right now, it seems to me two things will happen: first, you will develop into the person you could be as you surround yourself with things that express your own tastes and ideas; and second, as you relax and become interested in areas of creativity, you will develop into a more interesting person to be with.
Edith SchaefferRead
There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay.
Mary OliverRead
Why should I be weary when every cell of my body is bursting with life?
RumiRead