Mrs. Dalloway Quotes
"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself."
"For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh."
"Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages."
"She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown."
"She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on."
"The veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life."
"She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged."
"For it was the middle of June. The War was over."
"Oh if she could have had her life over again!"
"How moments like this are buds on the tree of life, flowers of darkness they are."
"Fear no more the heat o’ the sun; for the shock of Lady Bruton asking Richard to lunch without her made the moment in which she had stood shiver, as a plant on the river-bed feels the shock of a passing oar and shivers: so she rocked: so she shivered."
"She feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton’s face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence."
"Like a nun withdrawing, or a child exploring a tower, she went upstairs, paused at the window, came to the bathroom."
"An exquisite suspense, such as might stay a diver before plunging while the sea darkens and brightens beneath him, and the waves which threaten to break, but only gently split their surface, roll and conceal and encrust as they just turn over the weeds with pearl."
"Fear no more, says the heart. Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall."
"She had the power to make the moon, which he detested, rise at Bourton on the terrace in the summer sky."
"The future of civilization lies in the hands of young men like that, 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."
"Like the pulse of a perfect heart, life struck straight through the streets."
"It was a splendid morning too. Like the pulse of a perfect heart, life struck straight through the streets. There was no fumbling — no hesitation. Sweeping and swerving, accurately, punctually, noiselessly, there, precisely at the right instant, the motor-car stopped at the door."
"Coming as he did from a respectable Anglo-Indian family which for at least three generations had administered the affairs of a continent... there were moments when civilization, even of this sort, seemed dear to him as a personal possession; moments of pride in England; in butlers; chow dogs; girls in their security."
"She trusts to her charm too much. She overdoes it."
"Such are the visions which proffer great cornucopias full of fruit to the solitary traveller."
"Every one wobbled; every one seemed to bow, as she spoke, and then to stand up different."
"He grew more and more gloomy, not about that only; about everything."
"She was like a bird sheltering under the thin hollow of a leaf, who blinks at the sun when the leaf moves."
"Life itself, every moment of it, every drop of it, here, this instant, now, in the sun, in Regent’s Park, was enough."
"One doesn’t want to go on telling women they are pretty; that’s what most men of fifty would say, Peter Walsh thought, if they were honest."
"Jealousy which survives every other passion of mankind."
"The voice of no age or sex, the voice of an ancient spring spouting from the earth."
"Love which has lasted a million years, she sang, love which prevails."
"Still remembering how once in some primeval May she had walked with her lover, this rusty pump, this battered old woman with one hand exposed for coppers the other clutching her side, would still be there in ten million years, remembering how once she had walked in May."
"And if some one should see, what matter they?"
"Since she was so unhappy, for weeks and weeks now, Rezia had given meanings to things that happened, almost felt sometimes that she must stop people in the street, if they looked good, kind people, just to say to them 'I am unhappy.'"
"It might be possible, Septimus thought, looking at England from the train window, as they left Newhaven; it might be possible that the world itself is without meaning."
"Human nature, in short, was on him — the repulsive brute, with the blood-red nostrils."
"But what was his crime? He could not remember it."
"Trust everything to me," he said, and dismissed them.
"She exaggerated. She had perhaps lost her sense of proportion."
"But whatever it be, this object round which the essence of her soul is daily secreted, becomes inevitably prismatic, lustrous, half looking-glass, half precious stone."
"And one letter to the Times, she used to say to Miss Brush, cost her more than to organise an expedition to South Africa."
"Power was hers, position, income. She had lived in the forefront of her time."
"But to sit here, unable to think of anything to say; to see Elizabeth turning against her; to be felt repulsive even by her — it was too much; she could not stand it."
"Love destroyed too. Everything that was fine, everything that was true went."
"For he would say it in so many words, when he came into the room. Because it is a thousand pities never to say what one feels."
"But what could be done for female vagrants like that poor creature, stretched on her elbow (as if she had flung herself on the earth, rid of all ties, to observe curiously, to speculate boldly, to consider the whys and the wherefores, impudent, loose-lipped, humorous), he did not know."
"But he wanted to come in holding something. Flowers? Yes, flowers, since he did not trust his taste in gold; any number of flowers, roses, orchids, to celebrate what was, reckoning things as you will, an event."
"What she liked was simply life. 'That’s what I do it for,' she said, speaking aloud, to life."
"It was expression she needed, but her eyes were fine, Chinese, oriental, and, as her mother said, with such nice shoulders and holding herself so straight, she was always charming to look at; and lately, in the evening especially, when she was interested, for she never seemed excited, she looked almost beautiful, very stately, very serene."
"Every man fell in love with her, and she was really awfully bored."
"Suddenly Elizabeth stepped forward and most competently boarded the omnibus, in front of everybody."
"It was always talking about her own sufferings that made Miss Kilman so difficult."
"And every profession is open to the women of your generation, said Miss Kilman."
"She would go and see them in their cottages."
"It was quite different here from Westminster, she thought, getting off at Chancery Lane."
"Fear no more, says the heart in the body; fear no more."
"He was happy then. But she could not bear to see him smiling."
"Never had she felt so happy! Never in her life!"
"Like a woman who had slipped off her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue and pearls, the day changed, put off stuff, took gauze, changed to evening."
"The past enriched, and experience, and having cared for one or two people, and so having acquired the power which the young lack, of cutting short, doing what one likes, not caring a rap what people say and coming and going without any very great expectations."
"Absorbing, mysterious, of infinite richness, this life."
"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."
"She had done things too! 'I have five sons!' she told him."