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.
war men suffering
Most men, whether men or women, wish above all else to be comfortable, and thought is a pre-eminently uncomfortable process; it brings to the individual far more suffering than happiness in a semi-civilised world which still goes to war.
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.
war modern civilisation
Modern war and modern civilisation are utterly incompatible...one or the other must go.
peace war healing
The pacifist's task today is to find a method of helping and healing which provides a revolutionary constructive substitute for war.
english-writer
Meek wifehood is no part of my profession; I am your friend, but never your possession.
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.
thinking important reform
I can think of few important movements for reform in which success was won by any method other than that of an energetic minority presenting the indifferent majority with a fait accompli, which was then accepted.
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.
self self-righteous righteous
most of us have to be self-righteous before we can be righteous.
venice sea sculpture
Venice is all sea and sculpture ...
art writing people
So many people seem to imagine that because the actual tools of writing are easily accessible, it is less difficult than the other arts. This is entirely an illusion.
husband want may
It never seems to occur to anybody that some women may not want to find husbands.
baby husband children
Babies are a nuisance, of course. But so does everything seem to be that is worthwhile - husbands and books and committees and being loved and everything. We have to choose between ease and rich unrest.