Virginia Woolf

“...gece yarısı bütün sınırlar silinince toprak nasıl şeklini alır, tıpkı Romalıların ilk gördükleri gibi, ilk ayak bastıklarında, bulutlu, tepelerin adları yok; ırmaklar kestiremedikleri yerlere doğru kıvrılıyor- işte öyleydi yalnızlığı.”

“Kimse yoktu. Sözleri eriyip dağıldı havaya. Bir roket gibi.”

“Sevmek insanı yalnız kılıyor, diye düşündü. Kimseye açılamazdı artık.”

“Bu duruma düşeceğine, ölseydi keşke! Böyle gözlerini uzaklara dikip , kendisini görmeden, her şeyi, gökleri, ağaçları; oynayan, araba çeken, düdük çalan, düşen çocukları bile katlanılmaz hale getirince oturamıyordu yanında; her şey katlanılmaz hale gelmişti.”

“Ama kişi başarısızlıklarını gizler.”

“Arabaları gözlerken hep böyle onulmaz bir duygu, sanki çok uzaklardaymış, denizin ortasında yapayalnızmış gibi bir duygu kaplardı yüreğini; bir gün bile yaşamak çok, çok tehlikeliydi onca, hep böyle düşünmüştü.”

“Hem her şeyi bir bıçak gibi delip geçiyor, hem de dışarda kalıp bakıyordu.”

“...bazı günler, bazı görüntüler, usul usul getirirdi onu aklına, o eski burukluktan uzak; insanları sevmenin ödülüydü bu belki...”

“She would not have cared to confess how infinitely she preferred the exactitude, the star-like impersonality, of figures to the confusion, agitation, and vagueness of the finest prose.”

“It was one of those unclassified affections of which there are so many.”

“Yet it is true that there was an absent mindedness about her which sometimes made her clumsy; she was apt to think of poetry when she should have been thinking of taffeta; her walk was a little too much of a stride for a woman, perhaps, and her gestures, being abrupt, might endanger a cup of tea on occasion.”

“Change was incessant, and change perhaps would never cease. High battlements of thought, habits that had seemed as durable as stone, went down like shadows at the touch of another mind and left a naked sky and fresh stars twinkling in it.”

“How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously. Frailly. In thin stripes. It hangs like a glass cage. It is a hoop to be fractured by a tiny jar. There is a spark there. Next moment a flush of dun. Then a vapour as if earth were breathing in and out, once, twice, for the first time. Then under the dullness someone walks with a green light. Then off twists a white wraith. The woods throb blue and green, and gradually the fields drink in red, gold, brown. Suddenly a river snatches a blue light. The earth absorbs colour like a sponge slowly drinking water. It puts on weight; rounds itself; hangs pendent; settles and swings beneath our feet.”

“I like people to be unhappy because I like them to have souls.”

“Let us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotchpotch of impulses, our perpetual miracle - for the soul throws up wonders every second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death; let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life.”

“Recall, then, some event that has left a distinct impression on you---how at the corner of the street, perhaps, you passed two people talking. A tree shook; an electric light danced; the tone of the talk was comic, but also tragic; a whole vision, an entire conception, seemed contained in that moment.But when you attempt to reconstruct it in words, you will find that it breaks into a thousand conflicting impressions.”

“De vreme ce aparițiile noastre, adică partea din noi care apare, sunt atât de trecătoare, comparate cu cealaltă, partea nevăzută din noi, care se întinde departe, înseamnă că partea nevăzută poate supraviețui, poate fi cumva recuperată, atașată unei persoane sau alteia, sau poate chiar bântui anumite locuri, după moarte.”

“Sitting on the floor with her arms round Mrs Ramsay’s knees, close as she could get, smiling to think that Mrs Ramsay would never know the reason of that pressure, she imagined how in the chambers of the mind and heart of the woman who was, physically, touching her, were stood, like the treasures in the tombs of kings, tablets bearing sacred inscriptions, which if one could spell them out, would teach one everything, but they would never be offered openly, never made public. What art was there, known to love or cunning, by which one pressed through into those secret chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored?”

“There it was, all round them. It partook, she felt, carefully helping Mr. Bankes to a specially tender piece, of eternity.”

“The summer is put away folded up in the drawer with other summers.”

“Doesn't one always think of the past, in a garden with men and women lying under the trees? Aren't they one's past, all that remains of it, those men and women, those ghosts lying under the trees, ... one's happiness, one's reality?”

“Hänellä oli tuo kallisarvoinen kyky, aito naisellinen kyky, tehdä maailma omakseen missä tahansa olikin.”

“It is remarkable…what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about.”

“All the months are crude experiments out of which the perfect September is made.”

“She stood by the fireplace talking in that beautiful voice which made everything she said sound like a caress.”

“The strange thing on looking back was the purity, the integrity of her feeling for Sally. It was not like one's feeling for a man.”

“She was a fly, but the others were dragonflies, butterflies, beautiful insects, dancing, fluttering, skimming, while she alone dragged herself up out of the saucer.”

“...But beauty must be broken daily to remain beautiful...”

“As a cloud crosses the sun, silence falls on London; and falls on the mind. Effort ceases. Time flaps on the mast. There we stop; there we stand. Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame. Where there is nothing, Peter Walsh said to himself; feeling hollowed out, utterly empty within. Clarissa refused me, he thought. He stood there thinking, Clarissa refused me.”

“But I pine in Solitude. Solitude is my undoing.”

“I've seen more trouble come from long engagements than from any other forms of human folly.”

“Well, I really don't advise a woman who wants to have things her own way to get married.”

“Tragedies come in the hungry hours.”

“It is impossible for human beings, constituted as they are, both to fight and to have ideals.”

“They all dreamt of each other that night, as was natural, considering how thin the partitions were between them, and how strangely they had been lifted off the earth to sit next each other in mid-ocean, and see every detail of each others' faces, and hear whatever they chanced to say.”

“Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.”

“Youth, youth- something savage- something pedantic. For example there is Mr. Masefield, there is Mr. Bennett. Stuff them into the flame of Marlowe and burn them to cinders. Let not a shred remain. Don't palter with the second rate. Detest your own age. Build a better one.”

“Why, from the very windows, even in the dusk, you see a swelling run through the street, an aspiration, as with arms outstretched, eyes desiring, mouths agape. And then we peaceably subside. For if the exaltation lasted we should be blown like foam into the air. The stars would shine through us. We should go down the gale in salt drops- as sometimes happens. For the impetuous spirits will have none of this cradling. Never any swaying or aimlessly lolling for them. Never any making believe, or lying cosily, or genially supposing that one is much like another, fire warm, wine pleasant, extravagance a sin.”

“There was all the difference in the world between this planning airily away from the canvas and actually taking her brush and making the first mark.”

“Punctuality is one of the minor virtues which we do not acquire until later in life.”

“Friendships, even the best of them, are frail things. One drifts apart.”

“One never gets anything worth having by post.”

“You wish to be a poet; you wish to be a lover. But the splendid clarity of your intelligence, and the remorseless honestly of your intellect bring you to a halt.”

“De... de... miért érzi magát, anélkül, hogy okát tudná adni, hirtelen ilyen kétségbeejtően boldogtalannak?”

“Time flaps on the mast--”

“Mr Bankes expected her to answer. And she was about to say something criticizing Mrs Ramsay, how she was alarming, too, in her way, high-handed, or words to that effect, when Mr Bankes made it entirely unnecessary for her to speak by his rapture. For such it was considering his age, turned sixty, and his cleanliness and his impersonality, and the white scientific coat which seemed to clothe him. For him to gaze as Lily saw him gazing at Mrs Ramsay was a rapture, equivalent, Lily felt, to the loves of dozens of young men (and perhaps Mrs Ramsay had never excited the loves of dozens of young men). It was love, she thought, pretending to move her canvas, distilled and filtered; love that never attempted to clutch its object; but, like the love which mathematicians bear their symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and become part of the human gain. So it was indeed. The world by all means should have shared it, could Mr Bankes have said why that woman pleased him so; why the sight of her reading a fairy tale to her boy had upon him precisely the same effect as the solution of a scientific problem, so that he rested in contemplation of it, and felt, as he felt when he had proved something absolute about the digestive system of plants, that barbarity was tamed, the reign of chaos subdued.”

“Ce era asta? Ce însemna asta? Oare lucrurile puteau să-și întindă mâna, așa, și să te zgâlțâie; lama de cuțit putea să taie? pumnul să inșface? Nu exista o siguranță? Nicio posibilitate să înveți pe de rost căile vieții? Nicio îndrumare, niciun adăpost, totul era miracol, saltul din vârful unui pisc în spațiu? E posibil ca asta să fie viața, chiar pentru oamenii mai în vârstă? Surprinzătoare, neașteptată, necunoscută?” O clipă avu impresia că dacă s-ar ridica amândoi, aici, acum, pe pajiște, și ar cere o explicație, de ce e viața atât de scurtă, de ce e atât de inexplicabilă, daca și-ar formula întrebările vehement, așa cum ar fi îndreptățite să o facă două ființe umane bine oțelite, față de care nimic nu trebuie ascuns, atunci frumusețea s-ar desfășura; vidul s-ar umple; arabescurile acelea deșarte s-ar împreuna într-o formă; dacă ei doi ar striga destul de tare, doamna Ramsay s-ar întoarce. ”Doamnă Ramsay! strigă cu glas tare. Doamnă Ramsay!” Lacrimile i se rostogoleau pe obraji.”

“Tu și eu, și ea trecem și pierim; nimic nu dăinuie; totul se schimbă; în afară de cuvinte și pictură.”

“Cine poate ști ce suntem, ce simțim? Cine poate ști, chiar în momentul percepției intime” dacă aceasta era cunoașterea?”Nu-i așa că ratăm lucrurile de îndată ce încercăm să le exprimăm?”(...)Nu spunem mai mult prin tăcere? Cel puțin momentul acela părea de o extraordinară rodnicie. Scobise o gropiță în nisip și apoi o acoperise, în semn că îngropase acolo perfecțiunea acelei clipe. Era ca un strop de argint în care-ți scufundai și iluminai întunecimea trecutului.”

“Perhaps it was better not to see pictures: they only made one hopelessly discontented with one's own work.”