A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere.

West’s image treats hatred—normally condemned—as a kind of harsh illumination. In “dark places of life,” she suggests that intense moral revulsion can function like a lamp: it clarifies what is rotten, false, or oppressive when gentler sentiments might accommodate or excuse it. The second clause (“cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere”) frames hatred not as mere spite but as an iconoclastic energy directed against inherited pieties—institutions, traditions, or ideals kept alive by social pressure rather than genuine value. The quote thus argues for the critical usefulness of negative passion: it can empower refusal, expose hypocrisy, and clear space for renewal, even if it is dangerous when unmoored from judgment.