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Jessamyn West [1902-1984] American

Rank: 102
Author

Mary Jessamyn West was an American author of short stories and novels, notably The Friendly Persuasion. A Quaker from Indiana, she graduated from Fullerton Union High School in 1919 and Whittier College in 1923.

Imagination, Alone, Anger, Chance, Communication, Death, Family, Forgiveness, Future, History, Humor, Learning, Nature, Society, Work

Quote	Tags	Rank
A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.	Anger	101
The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.	Future, History, Imagination, Work	102
Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.	Alone, Family, Society	103
It is very east to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.	Forgiveness	104
Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract.	Nature	105
Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free.	Death	106
A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.	Humor	107
Teaching is the royal road to learning.	Learning	108
A big iron needle stitching the country together.		109
Nothing is so dear as what you're about to leave.		110
Only a fool would refuse to enter a fool's paradise when that's the only paradise he'll ever have a chance to enter.	Chance	111
We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.		112
If you train people properly, they won't be able to tell a drill from the real thing. If anything, the real thing will be easier.		113
The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.		114
There are two barriers that often prevent communication between the young and their elders. The first is middle-aged forgetfulness of the fact that they themselves are no longer young. The second is youthful ignorance of the fact that the middle aged are still alive.	Communication	115
We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint?		116
Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.	Imagination	117
The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness.		118
Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.		119
If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one.		120
I've done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.		121
Justice is a terrible but necessary thing.		122
A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.		123
Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.		124
A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain.		125
The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.		126
The sick soon come to understand that they live in a different world from that of the well and that the two cannot communicate.		201
You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it.		202
Groan and forget it.		203
In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults.		204
In my time and neighborhood (and in my soul) there was only one standard by which a woman measured success: did some man want her?		205

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