« like
the flap of a wave ; the kiss of a wave »
« before
Big Ben strikes. There ! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical ;
then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. »
« in
the triumph and th jingle and the strange high singing of som aeroplane
overhead was what she loved ; life ; London ; this moment of
June. »
« she
always felt a little skimpy beside Hugh ; schoolgirlish ; but
attached to him »
« he
could be intolerable ; he could be impossible ; but adorable to walk
with on a morning like this. »
« It
was the state of the world that interested him ; Wagner, Pope’s poetry,
people’s characters eternally, and the defects of her own soul. »
« For
in marriage a little licence, a little independence there must be between
people living together day in day out in the same house ; which Richard
gave her, and she him. »
« he
had married a woman met on the boat going to India ! »
« She
felt very young ; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a
knife through everything ; at the same time was outside, looking
on. »
« Her
only gift was knowing people almost by instinct. »
« she
would have been, in the first place, dark like Lady Bexborough, with a skin of
crumpled leather and beautiful eyes. She would have been, like Lady Bexborough,
slow and stately ; rather large ; interested in politics like a
man ; with a country house ; very dignified, very sincere. »
« She
had the oddest sense of being herself invisible ; unseen ;
unknown »
« And
her old Uncle William used to say a lady is known by her shoes and her
gloves. »
« girls
in muslin frocks came out to pick sweet peas and roses after the superb
summer’s day, with its almost blue-black sky, its delphiniums, its carnations,
its arum lilies, was over ; and it was the moment between six and seven
when every flower – roses, carnations, irises, lilac – glows ; white,
violet, red, deep orange ; every flower seems to burn by itself, softly,
purely in the misty beds ; and how she loved the grey white moths spinning
in and out, over the cherry pie, over the evening primroses ! »
« the
spirit of religion was abroad with her eyes bandaged tight and her lips gaping
wide. »
« The
world has raised its whip ; where will it descend ? »
« greatness
was passing, hidden, down Bond Street, removed only by a hand’s-breadth from
ordinary people »
« bones
with a few wedding rings mixed up in their dust »
« Sounds
made harmonies with premeditation ; the spaces between them were as
significant as the sounds. A child cried. Rightly far away a horn sounded. All
taken together meant the birth of a new religion »
« To
love makes one solitary, she thought »
« He
was selfish. So men are. »
« at
midnight, when all boundaries are lost, the country reverts to its ancient
shape, as the Romans saw it, lying cloudy, when they landed, and the hills had
no names and rivers wound they knew not where – such was her darkness »
« Lovely
in girlhood, suddenly there came a moment – for example on the river beneath
the woods at Clieveden – when, through some contraction of this cold spirit,
she had failed him. And then at Constantinople, and again and again. »
« It
was an extraordinary beauty of the kind she most admired, dark, large-eyed,
with that quality which, since she hadn’t got it herself, she always envied – a
sort of abandonment, as if she could say anything, do anything ; a quality
much commoner in foreigners than in Englishwomen. Sally always said she had
French blood in her veins, and ancestor had been with Marie Antoinette, had his
head cut off, left a ruby ring. »
« They
meant to found a society to abolish provate property, and actually had a letter
written, though not sent out. The ideas were Sally’s of course – but very soon
she was just as excited – read Plato in bed before breakfast, read
Morris ; read Shelley by the hour. »
« they
spoke of marriage always as a catastrophe »
« That
was her feeling – Othello’s feeling, and she felt it, she was convinced, as
strongly as Shakespeare meant Othello to feel it, all because she was coming
down to dinner in a white frock to meet Sally Seton ! »
« She
stood by the fireplace talking, in that beautiful voice which made everything
she said sound like a caress »
« A
book was sentimental ; an attitude to life sentimental. »
« Strange,
she thought, pausing on the landing, and assembling that diamond shape, that
single person, strange how a mistress knows the very moment, the very temper of
her house ! Faint sounds rose in spirals up the well of the stairs ;
the swish of a mop ; tapping ; knocking ; a loudness when the
front door opened ; a voice repeating a message in the basement ; the
chink of silver on a tray ; clean silver for the party. All was for the
party. »
« there’s
nothing in the world so bad for some women as marriage, he thought ; and
politics ; and having a Conservative husband, like the admirable
Richard. »
« Of
course I did, thought Peter ; it almost broke my heart too, he
thought ; and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon
looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken
day. »
« Take
me with you, Clarissa thought impulsively, as if he were starting directly upon
some great voyage ; and then, next moment, it was as if the five acts of a
play that had been very exciting and moving were now over and she had lived a
lifetime in them and had run away, had lived with Peter, and it was now
over. »
« The
way she said « Here is my Elizabeth ! » - that annoyed him. Why
not « Here’s Elizabeth » simply ? It was insincere. And
Elizabeth didn’t like it either. »
« As
a cloud crosses the sun, silence falls on London ; and falls on the
mind. »
« Still
the future of civilisation lies, he thought, in the hands of young men liek
that ; of young men such as he was, thirty years ago ; with their
love of abstract principles ; getting books sent out to them all the way
from London to a peak in the Himalayas ; reading science ; reading
philosophy. The future lies in the hands of young men like that, he
thought. »
« It
was a splendid morning too. Like the pulse of a perfect heart, life struck
straight through the streets. »
« women
live much more in the past thant we do, he thought. They attach themselves to
places ; and their fathers – a woman’s always prouf of her father. »
« Everyone
gives up something when they marry. »
« Never
had he seen London look so enchanting – the softness of the distances ;
the richness ; the greenness ; the civilisation, after India, he
thought, strolling across the grass. »
« She
was one of those obscure mouse-like little women who admire big men. »
« With
twice his wits, she had to see things through his eyes – one of the tragedies
of married life. »
« jealousy
which survives every other passion of mankind »
« But
women, he thought, shutting his pocket-knife, don’t know what passion is. The don’t
know the meaning of it to men. »
« ‘The
English are so silent,’ Rezia said. She liked it, she said. She respected these
Englishmen, and wanted to see London, and the English horses, and the
tailor-made suits, and could remember hearing how wonderful the shops were,
from an aunt who had married and lived in Soho. »
« For
the truth is (let her ignore it) that human beings have neither kindness, nor
faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the
moment. »
« there
was in Sir William, who had never had time for reading, a grudge, deeply
buried, against cultivated people who came into his room and intimated that
doctors, whose profession is a constant strain upon all the highest faculties,
are not educated men. »
« He
brushed surfaces ; the dead languages, the living, life in Constantinople,
Paris, Rome ; riding, shooting, tennis, it had been once. »
« He
had been afloat on the cream of English society. »
« He
was made of much finer material »
« Lady
Bruton had the reputation of being more interested in politics than
people ; of talking like a man »
« She
sighed, she snored, not that she was asleep, only drowsy and heavy, drowsy and
heavy, like a field of clover in the sunshine this hot June day, with the bees
going rounf and about and the yellow butterflies. »
« Power
was hers, position, income. She had lived in the forefront of her time. She had
had good friends ; known the ablest men of her day. Murmuring London
flowed up to her, and her hand, lying on the sofa back, curled upon some
imaginary baton such as her grandfathers might have held, holding which she
seemed, drowsy and heavy, to be commanding battalions marching to Canada, and
those good fellows walking across London, that errtitory of theirs, that little
bit of carpet, Mayfair. »
« as
a single spider’s thread is blotted with rain-drops, and, burdened, sags down.
So she slept. »
« And
as a single spider’s thread after wavering here and there attaches itself to
the point of a leaf, so Richard’s mind, recovering from its lethargy, set now
on his wife, Clarissa, whom Peter Walsh had loved so passionately ; and
Richard had had a sudden vision of her there at luncheon ; of himself and
Clarissa ; of their life together »
« Bearing
his flowers like a weapon »
« It
was a great age in which to have lived. Indeed, hiw own life was a
miracle ; let him make no mistake about it ; here he was, in the
prime of life, walking to his house in Westminster to tell Clarissa that he
loved her. Happiness is this, he thought. »
« Big
Ben was beginning to strike, first the warning, musical ; then the hour,
irrevocable. »
« She
cared much more for her roses thant for the Armenians. »
« 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 shed id not know. »
« Elizabeth,
on the contrary, was dark : had Chinese eyes in a pale face ; an
Oriental mytery ; was gentle, considerate, still. As a child, she had had
a perfect sense of humour ; but now at seventeen, why, Clarissa could not
in the least understand, she had become very serious ; like a hyacinth
sheathed in glossy green, with buds just tinted, a hyacinth which has had no
sun. »
« Her
sigh was tender and enchanting, like the wind outside a wood in the
evening. »
« When
she sewed, he thought, she made a sound like a kettle on the hob ;
bubbling, murmuring, always busy, her strong little pointed fingers pinching
and poking, her needle flashing straight. »
« That
was civilisation. It struck him coming back from the East – the efficiency, the
organisation, the communal spirit of London. Every cart or carriage of its own
accord drew aside to let the ambulance pass. Perhaps it was morbid ; or
was it not touching rather, the respect which they showed this ambulancewith
its victim inside »
« he
was bookish »
« She
belonged to a different age »
« They
just went on talking, yeti t was perfectly plain that they all knew, felt to
the marrow of their bones, this majesty passing ; this symbol of what they
all stood for, English society. »
« For
he liked nothing better than doing kindnesses, making the hearts of old ladies
palpitate with the joy of being though of in their age »
« To
be not English even among the dead – no, no ! Impossible ! »
« and
what was the other thing – plants, hydrangeas, syringas, very very rare
hibiscus lilies that never grow north of the Suez Canal »
« She
was like a lily, Sally said, a lily by the side of a pool. »
« What
does the brain matter,’ said Lady Rosseter, getting up, ‘compared with the
heart ?’
‘I
will come,’ said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this terror ?
what is this ecstasy ? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me
with extraordinary excitement ?
It
is Clarissa, he said.
For
there she was. »
Mrs
Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
