82 Quotes by Vera Brittain
"I am less blindly confident than I once was, for I have been learning a truer estimate of myself, my failings and limitations, in these dark days. I have learnt to hope that if there be a Judgment Day of some kind, God will not see us with our own eyes, nor judge us as we judge ourselves."
"People talked so foolishly, I thought, about the ennobling effects of suffering. No doubt the philosophy that tells you your soul grows through grief and sorrow is right--ultimately. But I don't think this is the case at first. At first, pain beyond a certain point merely makes you lifeless, and apathetic to everything but itself."
"Wisconsin was covered several inches deep in snow -- very beautiful, with light ice-floes on the lakes and rivers, and the bare trees and tall grasses like brown feathers against the snow. As the sun set it was reflected in the ice-covered lakes and the light snow -- but all the same I'm glad that most of my [lecture] tour has been in summer and autumn weather. As soon as winter comes there is an extraordinary effect of desolation in these miles upon miles of uninhabited prairies and hills."
"Eén van de belangrijkste factoren voor geestelijke groei is immers tijd om na te denken en vrije tijd om uitdrukking te kunnen geven aan je gedachten."
"He was, I told myself, a unique experience in my existence; I never think definitely of him as man or boy, as older or younger, taller or shorter than I am, but always of him as a mind in tune with mine, in which many of the notes are quite different from mine but are all in the same key."
"I know of no place where the wind can be as icy and the damp so penetrating as in Oxford round about Easter time."
"At sixteen, he was inclined to be rather priggish and self-righteous. Not such bad qualities in adolescence after all, since most of us have to be self-righteous before we can be righteous."