This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
I am what I am, and intend to be it,' for which there will be no form in the world unless Jacob makes one for himself.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
She saw the light again. With some irony in her interrogation, for when one woke at all, one's relations changed, she looked at the steady light, the pitiless, the remorseless, which was so much her, yet so little her, which had her at its beck and call (she woke in the night and saw it bent across their bed, stroking the floor), but for all that she thought, watching it with fascination, hypnotised, as if it were stroking with its silver fingers some sealed vessel in her brain whose bursting would flood her with delight, she had known happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
He loved, beneath all this summer transiency, to feel the earth's spine beneath him; for such he took the hard root of the oak tree to be; or, for image followed image, it was the back of a great horse that he was riding, or the deck of a tumbling ship -- it was anything indeed, so long as it was hard, for he felt the need of something which he could attach his floating heart to; the heart that tugged at his side; the heart that seemed filled with spiced and amorous gales every evening about this time when he walked out.
Loneliness | Lying | Truth | Waste | Old |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
For here again, we come to a dilemma. Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above. For it was this mixture in her of man and woman, one being uppermost and then the other, that often gave her conduct an unexpected turn. The curious of her own sex would argue how, for example, if Orlando was a woman, did she never take more than ten minutes to dress? And were not her clothes chosen rather at random, and sometimes worn rather shabby? And then they would say, still, she has none of the formality of a man, or a man’s love of power.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
She fell into a deep pool of sticky water, which eventually closed over her head. She saw nothing and heard nothing but a faint booming sound, which was the sound of the sea rolling over her head. While all her tormentors thought that she was dead, she was not dead, but curled up at the bottom of the sea.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
For some reason, we know not what, his childhood was sharply severed. It lodged in him whole and entire. He could not disperse it.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Needless to say, the business of living interferes with the solitude so needed for any work of the imagination. Here's what Virginia Woolf said in her diary about the sticky issue: I've shirked two parties, and another Frenchman, and buying a hat, and tea with Hilda Trevelyan, for I really can't combine all this with keeping all my imaginary people going.
Deeds | Ends | Family | Land | Lying | Man | Memory | Need | Work | Deeds |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Fame will last maybe two thousand years. And that means two thousand years? (Asked Mr. Ramsay, ironically, gaze at the hedge). Indeed, the means contemplated by the crown of a mountain, vast wilderness of centuries? Even stones that tumble with ice tip will outlast Shakespeare. And his little light will burn without too much shine, a year or two after that will be absorbed more light, and this, in turn, by another and more alive.
Lying |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
There it was before her - life. Life: she thought but she did not finish her thought. She took a look at life, for she had a clear sense of it there, something real, something private, which she shared neither with her children nor with her husband. A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her; and sometimes they parleyed (when she sat alone); there were, she remembered, great reconciliation scenes; but for the most part, oddly enough, she must admit that she felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
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.
Lying |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Why, I ask, can I not finish the letter that I am writing? For my room is always scattered with unfinished letters. I begin to suspect, when I am with you, that I am among the most gifted of men. I am filled with the delight of youth, with potency, with the sense of what is to come. blundering, but fervid, I see myself buzzing round flowers, humming down scarlet cups, making blue funnels resound with my prodigious booming. How richly I shall enjoy my youth (you make me feel). And London. And freedom. But stop. You are not listening. You are making some protest, as you slide, with an inexpressibly familiar gesture, your hand along your knee. By such signs we diagnose our friends' diseases. Do not, in your affluence and plenty, you seem to say, pass me by. Stop, you say. Ask me what I suffer.
Extravagance | Lying | Will |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Cosmic wisdom reveals why unhappy events happen, after which they cease to happen.
Confidence | People | Truth |
Let the principle of liberty work, but let it work well. In letters, as in society, not etiquette, not anarchy, but laws.
Lying |
Victor Borge, born Børge Rosenbaum
If I have caused just one person to wipe away a tear of laughter, that's my reward... The rest goes to the government!
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
If a prisoner felt that he could no longer endure the realities of camp life, he found a way out in his mental life — an invaluable opportunity to dwell in the spiritual domain, the one that the SS were unable to destroy. Spiritual life strengthened the prisoner, helped him adapt, and thereby improved his chances of survival.
Victor Borge, born Børge Rosenbaum
The Steinway people have asked me to announce that this is a Baldwin piano. (Just before starting a piece)
Lying |