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
achievement citizens combined faced greater lesser liberation longer major mankind members millions period previous races series societies stage strangely subject united violence wars workers
At no previous period has mankind been faced by a half-century which so paradoxically united violence and progress. Its greater and lesser wars and long series of major assassinations have been strangely combined with the liberation of more societies and individuals than ever before in history, and by the transformation of millions of second-class citizens -- women, workers and the members of subject races -- to a stage at which first-rate achievement is no longer inhibited even if opportunities are not yet complete.
break-up husband reading
I know one husband and wife who, whatever the official reasons given to the court for the break up of their marriage, were really divorced because the husband believed that nobody ought to read while he was talking and the wife that nobody ought to talk while she was reading.
peace hate order
All that a pacifist can undertake -- but it is a very great deal -- is to refuse to kill, injure or otherwise cause suffering to another human creature, and untiringly to order his life by the rule of love though others may be captured by hate.
war writing mean
I wish those people who write so glibly about this being a holy war and the orators who talk so much about going on, no matter how long the war lasts and what it may mean, could see a case of musterd gas - the poor things burnt and blistered all over with great musterd coloured suppurating blisters, with blind eyes, all sticky and stuck together, and always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying their throats are closing and they know they will choke.
expression political immaturity
Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.
waiting mood cease
An author who waits for the right 'mood' will soon find that 'moods' get fewer and fewer until they cease altogether.
successful ideas order
The idea that it is necessary to go to a university in order to become a successful writer . . . is one of those fantasies that surround authorship.
spring lasts may
I thought that spring must last forevermore, For I was young and loved, and it was May.
mercy providence should
We should never be at the mercy of Providence if only we understood that we ourselves are Providence.
party book people
Nevertheless, hateful as saying 'No' always is to an imaginative person, and certain as the offence may be that it will cause to individuals whose own work does not require isolated effort, the writer who is engaged on a book must learn to say it. He must say it consistently to all interrupters; to the numerous callers and correspondents who want him to speak, open bazaars, see them for 'only' ten minutes, attend literary parties, put people up, or read, correct and find publishers for semi-literate manuscripts by his personal friends.
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.
husband want may
It never seems to occur to anybody that some women may not want to find husbands.
venice sea sculpture
Venice is all sea and sculpture ...