“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“What does the brain matter compared with the heart?”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“Mrs Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely? All this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“She thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“Beauty, the world seemed to say. And as if to prove it (scientifically) wherever he looked at the houses, at the railings, at the antelopes stretching over the palings, beauty sprang instantly. To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy. Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now again some chime (it might be a motor horn) tinkling divinely on the grass stalks—all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now. Beauty was everywhere.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“It was a silly, silly dream, being unhappy.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“...she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“Clarissa had a theory in those days - they had heaps of theories, always theories, as young people have. It was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. For how could they know each other? You met every day; then not for six months, or years. It was unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people. But she said, sitting on the bus going up Shaftesbury Avenue, she felt herself everywhere; not 'here, here, here'; and she tapped the back of the seat; but everywhere. She waved her hand, going up Shaftesbury Avenue. She was all that. So that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places. Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoke to, some women in the street, some man behind a counter - even trees, or barns. It ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for all her scepticism), that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places, after death. Perhaps - perhaps.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with this extraordinary excitement?
It is Clarissa, he said.
For there she was.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“But nothing is so strange when one is in love (and what was this except being in love?) as the complete indifference of other people.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“Peter would think her sentimental. So she was. For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worth saying – what one felt. Cleverness was silly. One must say simply what one felt.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“So he was deserted. The whole world was clamouring: Kill yourself, kill yourself, for our sakes. But why should he kill himself for their sakes? Food was pleasant; the sun hot; and this killing oneself, how does one set about it, with a table knife, uglily, with floods of blood, - by sucking a gaspipe? He was too weak; he could scarcely raise his hand. Besides, now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense: and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know.
All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter; then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was!-that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant . . .”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“She belonged to a different age, but being so entire, so complete, would always stand up on the horizon, stone-white, eminent, like a lighthouse marking some past stage on this adventurous, long, long voyage, this interminable --- this interminable life.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“Moments like this are buds on the tree of life. Flowers of darkness they are.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“Her life was a tissue of vanity and deceit.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“Fear no more, says the heart...”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
“First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf
Born place: in Kensington, Middlesex, England, The United Kingdom
Born date January 25, 1882
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“He has a roar like a lion,” some cat commented from behind Jayfeather. “Then I’ll call him Lion’s Roar,” Shy Fawn murmured proudly. No, Jayfeather thought. This is Lionblaze. Welcome, brother.”
― Erin Hunter, quote from Sign of the Moon
“I close my eyes and try and shut him out. My fingers don’t want to stay in time. They want to race ahead in fury, plunging into the dense fog of black notes, pulling the music out by its roots, hurling it up out of the piano and into the air.”
― Tabitha Suzuma, quote from A Voice in the Distance
“Every morning I was renewed, though. Air and light healed me, over and over. I got to where I depended on it. When I was feeling my worst, I would step out into the yard and put my hands on the branches of the little redbud. It made me feel like I was saying a prayer, to do this. I know that sounds like foolishness, but that little tree was like an altar for me. I stood there in the cold of early winter, wishing for the redbud to bear leaves so that I might put my face against them.”
― Silas House, quote from A Parchment of Leaves
“I like sex for breakfast, kid. I eat early and often.”
― Karen Marie Moning, quote from Iced
“These were colours he'd never ever seen before; ones he couldn't possibly begin to name. Here, to his left, was a wooden clock, and it was painted, well not exactly green, but a colour that green might like to be if it had any imagination at all. And over there, beside the wooden board game whose overriding colour was not red, but something that red might look at enviously, blushing with embarrassment at its own dull appearance. And the wooden letter sets, well, there were those who might have said that they were painted yellow and blue, but they would have said this knowing that such plain words were an outrageous insult to the colouring on the letters themselves.”
― John Boyne, quote from Noah Barleywater Runs Away
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