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
Motherhood is neither a duty nor a privilege, but simply the way that humanity can satisfy the desire for physical immortality and triumph over the fear of death.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Motherhood reflects humanity's desire for legacy and the fight against mortality.
In this quote, Rebecca West suggests that motherhood transcends traditional views of duty or privilege; instead, it embodies a fundamental aspect of human nature, which is the yearning for physical immortality. This desire to create and nurture new life can be seen as a powerful response to the inherent fear of death, emphasizing that through motherhood, individuals seek to leave a lasting impact on the world and outlive their own mortality.
Themes
MotherhoodLegacyMortalityHumanityFear
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of family during a community event.
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
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