54+ Jessamyn West Quotes On Friendship, Education And West

Jessamyn West was an American author born in 1902. She wrote short stories and novels, often set in rural Indiana, which focused on the struggles of everyday people. Her most famous works include The Friendly Persuasion and The Witch Diggers. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Jessamyn West on love, friendship, education.

Top 10 Jessamyn West Quotes

1. A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.
2. Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.
3. I have done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.
4. Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.
5. A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.
6. We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint?
7. A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain.
8. 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.
9. If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one.
10. People who keep journals have life twice

Jessamyn West Short Quotes

• The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.
• I've done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.
• Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.
• Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.
• Nothing is so dear as what you're about to leave.
• Teaching is the royal road to learning.
• Groan and forget it.
• At fourteen you don't need sickness or death for tragedy.
• A good time for laughing is when you can.
• The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.

Jessamyn West Quotes About Love

I seem to be the only person in the world who doesn't mind being pitied. If you love me, pity me. The human state is pitiable: born to die, capable of so much, accomplishing so little; killing instead of creating, destroying instead of building, hating instead of loving. Pitiful, pitiful. — Jessamyn West

In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults. They frolic with animals, caress them, share with them feelings neither has words for. Have they ever stroked any adult with the love they bestow on a cat? Hugged any grownup with the ecstasy they feel when clasping a puppy? — Jessamyn West

The emotion, the ecstasy of love, we all want, but God spare us the responsibility. — Jessamyn West

Knowledge of what you love somehow comes to you; you don’t have to read nor analyze nor study. If you love a thing enough, knowledge of it seeps into you, with particulars more real than any chart can furnish. — Jessamyn West

It is the loving, not the loved, woman who feels loveable. — Jessamyn West

Jessamyn West Quotes About Life

You make what seems a simple choice: choose a man or a job or a neighborhood- and what you have chosen is not a man or a job or a neighborhood, but a life. — Jessamyn West

Each death and departure comes to us as a surprise, a sorrow never anticipated. Life is a long series of farewells; only the circumstances should surprise us. — Jessamyn West

Somehow I have the feeling that in some book is the great treasure I've been looking for all my life. — Jessamyn West

Jessamyn West Quotes About Writing

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. — Jessamyn West

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. — Jessamyn West

There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as exist do not lead through neat critical gardens, various as they are, but through the jungles of self, the world, and of craft. — Jessamyn West

Writing is so difficult that I feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter. — Jessamyn West

Jessamyn West Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — Jessamyn West

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. — Jessamyn West

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? — Jessamyn West

It's very easy to forgive others their mistakes, it takes more gut and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own. — Jessamyn West

The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness. — Jessamyn West

The sick soon come to understand that they live in a different world from that of the well and that the two cannot communicate. — Jessamyn West

We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions. — Jessamyn West

Some people are always thirsting for water from other people's wells. — Jessamyn West

It is not easy to be solitary unless you are also born ruthless. Every solitary repudiates someone. — Jessamyn West

Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract. — Jessamyn West

Being consistent meant not departing from convictions already formulated; being a leader meant making other persons accept these convictions. It was a narrow track, and a one-way, but a person might travel a considerable distance on it. A number of dictators have. — Jessamyn West

It is very east to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own. — Jessamyn West

A big iron needle stitching the country together. — Jessamyn West

I am always jumping into the sausage grinder and deciding, even before I’m half ground, that I don’t want to be a sausage after all. — Jessamyn West

To meet at all, one must open ones eyes to another; and there is no true conversation no matter how many words are spoken, unless the eye, unveiled and listening, opens itself to the other. — Jessamyn West

Justice is a terrible but necessary thing. — Jessamyn West

The conversation of two people remembering, if the memory is enjoyable to both, rocks on like music or lovemaking. There is a rhythm and a predictability to it that each anticipates and relishes. — Jessamyn West

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. — Jessamyn West

In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults — Jessamyn West

With enough libraries, all content is free. — Jessamyn West

One can write out of love or hate. Hate tells one a great deal about a person. Love makes one become the person. Love, contrary to legend, is not half as blind, at least for writing purposes, as hate. Love can see the evil and not cease to be love. Hate cannot see the good and remain hate. The writer, writing out of hatred, will, thus, paint a far more partial picture than if he had written out of love. — Jessamyn West

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. — Jessamyn West

Life Lessons by Jessamyn West

1. From Jessamyn West, we can learn the importance of being true to ourselves and living authentically. She taught us that it is possible to live a life of integrity and kindness, even when faced with difficult circumstances.
2. We can also learn from her that it is possible to create beauty and joy in our lives, even when facing adversity. She showed us that it is possible to find joy and hope in the midst of darkness.
3. Finally, Jessamyn West taught us that it is possible to find strength and courage in the face of adversity, and that we can use our experiences to help others. She showed us that we can use our struggles to help others, and that we can use our stories to inspire and empower those around us.