Back to Virginia Woolf Seminar Home Page
Updated August 15, 1997
Created August 15, 1997
1. 241 "And being in love for the first time, I made a phrase, for a hole had been knocked in my mind, one of those sudden transparences through which one sees everything."
2. 241 "The wax --- the virginal wax that coats the spine melted in different patches for each of us. . . . Louis was disgusted by the nature of human flesh; Rhoda by our cruelty; Susan could not share; Neville wanted order; Jinny love; and so on. We suffered terribly as we became separate bodies."
3. 245 "Nothing, nothing, nothing broke with its fin that leaden waste of waters. Nothing would happen to lift that weight of intolerable boredom. . . . We grew; we changed; for, of course, we are animals. . . . We exist not only separately but in undifferentiated blobs of matter."
4. 251 "Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched --- love for instance --- we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next."
5. 252 "Rhoda come wandering vaguely. . . . The willow as she saw it grew on the verge of a grey desert where no bird sang. The leaves shriveled as she looked at them, tossed in agony as she passed them."
6. 252 "Then Jinny came. . . . She was like a crinkled poppy, febrile, thirsty with the desire to drink dry dust. . . . So little flames zigzag over the cracks in the dry earth. She made the willows dance, but not with illusion; for she saw nothing that was not there."
7. 253 "Louis, when he let himself down on the grass, cautiously spreading (I do not exaggerate) a mackintosh square, made one acknowledge his presence. It was formidable. . . . His grim and caustic tongue reproved my indolence. He fascinated me with his sordid imagination."
8. 256 "The crystal, the globe of life as one calls it, far from being hard and cold to the touch, has walls of thinnest air. If I press them all will burst."
9. 257 "Nevertheless, life is pleasant, life is tolerable. Tuesday follows Monday; then comes Wednesday. The mind grows rings; the identity becomes robust; pain is absorbed in growth. Opening and shutting, shutting and opening, with an increasing hum and sturdiness, the haste and fever of youth are drawn into service until the whole being seems to expand in and out like the mainspring of a clock. How fast the stream flows from January to December! We are swept on by the torrent of things grown so familiar that they cast no shadow. We float, we float. . . ."
10. 260 "There are many rooms --- many Bernards. There was the charming, but weak; the strong, but supercilious; the brilliant, but remorseless; the very good fellow, but, I make no doubt, the awful bore; the sympathetic, but cold; the shabby, but --- go into the next room --- the foppish, worldly, and too well dressed. What I was to myself was different; was none of these."
11. 261 "Life is pleasant. Life is good. The mere process of life is satisfactory. . . . Something always has to be done next. Tuesday follows Monday; Wednesday Tuesday. Each spreads the same ripple of well-being, repeats the same curve of rhythm; covers fresh sand with a chill or ebbs a little slackly without. So the being grows rings; identity becomes robust."
12. 265 ". . . we compared Percival to a lily --- Percival whom I wanted to lose his hair, to shock the authorities, to grow old with me; he was already covered over with the lilies."
13. 266 "Was there no sword, nothing with which to batter down these walls, this protection, this begetting of children and living behind curtains, and becoming daily more involved and committed, with books and pictures? Better burn one’s life out like Louis, desiring perfection; or like Rhoda leave us, flying past us, to the desert; or choose one out of millions and one only like Neville; better be like Susan and love and hate the heat of the sun or the frost-bitten grass; or be like Jinny, honest, an animal. All had their rapture; their common feeling with death; something that stood them in stead."
14. 269 "I jumped up, I said, ‘Fight.’ ‘Fight.,’ I repeated. It is the effort and the struggle, it is the perpetual warfare, it is the shattering and piecing together --- this is the daily battle, defeat or victory, the absorbing pursuit."
15. 275 "Our friends --- how distant, how mute, how seldom visited and little known. And I, too, am dim to my friends and unknown; a phantom, sometimes seen, often not. Life is a dream surely. Our flame, the will-o’-the-wisp that dances in a few eyes is soon to be blown out and all will fade."
16. 276 ". . . what I call ‘my life,’ it is not one life that I look back upon; I am not one person; I am many people; I do not altogether know who I am --- Jinny, Susan, Neville, Rhoda, or Louis: or how to distinguish my life from theirs."
17. 284 "This self . . . made no answer. He threw up no opposition. He attempted no phrase. His fist did not form. I waited. I listened. Nothing came, nothing. I cried then with a sudden conviction of complete desertion, Now there is nothing. No fin breaks the waste of this immeasurable sea. Life has destroyed me. No echo comes when I speak, no varied words. This is more truly death than the death of friends, than the death of youth."
18. 288 "And now I ask, ‘Who am I?’ I have been talking of Bernard, Neville, Jinny, Susan, Rhoda and Louis. Am I all of them? Am I one and distinct? I do not know. We sat here together. But now Percival is dead, and Rhoda is dead; we are divided; we are not here. Yet I cannot find any obstacle separating us. There is no division between me and them. As I talked I felt, ‘I am you.’ This difference we make so much of, this identity we so feverishly cherish, was overcome."
19. 295 "I have done with phrases. How much better is silence . . . . Let me sit here for ever with bare things . . . myself being myself. . . . . let me sit on and on, silent, alone."
20. 297 "Yes, this is the eternal renewal, the incessant rise and fall and fall and rise again. And in me too the wave rises. It swells; it arches its back. . . . What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us? . . . . Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man’s, like Percival’s, when he galloped into India. . . . Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!"