Vera Brittain
Vera Brittain
Vera Mary Brittainwas an English nurse, writer, feminist, and pacifist. Her best-selling 1933 memoir Testament of Youth recounted her experiences during the First World War and the beginning of her journey towards pacifism...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth29 December 1893
eye poet prose
The best prose is written by authors who see their universe with a poet’s eyes.
self self-righteous righteous
most of us have to be self-righteous before we can be righteous.
college secluded vegetation
College is a secluded life of scholastic vegetation
children men order
For a woman as for a man, marriage might enormously help or devastatingly hinder the growth of her power to contribute something impersonally valuable to the community in which she lived, but it was not that power, and could not be regarded as an end in itself. Nor, even, were children ends in themselves; it was useless to go on producing human beings merely in order that they, in their sequence, might produce others, and never turn from this business of continuous procreation to the accomplishment of some definite and lasting piece of work.
husband want may
It never seems to occur to anybody that some women may not want to find husbands.
attitude lying men
It is probably true to say that the largest scope for change still lies in men's attitude to women, and in women's attitude to themselves.
venice sea sculpture
Venice is all sea and sculpture ...
humanity world levels
Few of humanity's characteristics are more disconcerting than its ability to reduce world-events to its own level, wherever this may happen to be.
work passion careers
Definite gifts render their possessors capable of overcoming any obstacle this side of death; they create an impetus of far more genuine value than external advantages in some other career where the impulse to make use of them remains weak or non-existent. The work that one enjoys is the greatest source of happiness and vitality in life.
children parent age
belated maternity has had its compensations; small children have a habit of conferring persistent youth upon their parents, and by their eager vitality postpone the unenterprising cautions and timidities of middle age.
honesty people sorrow
Why, I wonder, do people who at one time or another have all been young themselves, and who ought therefore to know better, generalize so suavely and so mendaciously about the golden hours of youth-that period of life when every sorrow seems permanent, and every setback insuperable?
easter wind oxford
I know of no place where the wind can be as icy and the damp so penetrating as in Oxford round about Easter time.
friends children parent
However deep our devotion may be to parents or to children, it is our contemporaries alone with whom understanding is instinctive and entire.
meek possession profession
Meek wifehood is no part of my profession; / I am your friend, but never your possession.