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Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf Quotes

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“Arriba en el cielo, las golondrinas trazaban lazos, volaban haciendo curvas y quiebros, se precipitaban de un lado a otro, giraban y giraban, pero siempre con perfecto dominio, como si estuvieran sostenidas por elásticos; y las moscas que subían y bajaban, el sol tocando ahora una hoja, otra después, burlón, deslumbrándola con oro suave en un gesto de buen humor; y de vez en cuando una campana (pudiera ser la bocina de un coche), resonando divinamente en las briznas de hierba... Todo esto, aun siendo tranquilo y razonable, aun estando constituido por cosas ordinarias, era ahora la verdad; la belleza, eso era la verdad. La belleza estaba en todas partes.”

“Pero, dijo Clarissa, sentada en el autobús que ascendía por Shaftesbury Avenue, ella se sentía en todas partes; no «aquí, aquí, aquí»; y golpeó el respaldo del asiento; sino en todas partes. Clarissa agitó la mano, mientras ascendían por Shaftesbury Avenue. Ella era todo aquello. De manera que, para conocer a Clarissa, o para conocer a cualquiera, uno debía buscar a la gente que lo completaba; incluso los lugares.”

“Pero vamos a comer primero -dijo. Y así, con batiente de puertas, empezó un exquisito vaivén silencioso de doncellas con delantales y cofias blancas, doncellas no por necesidad sino porque forman parte del misterio o mejor del gran engaño que las damas de Mayfair practican de una y media a dos cuando, con un gesto de la mano, cesa el tráfico y surge en su lugar esta profunda mentira, la comida en primer lugar, que nadie paga; y luego la mesa que parece cubrirse como por voluntad propia de vidrio y de plata, de manteles individuales, de cuencos de fruta roja, de filetes de rodaballo cubiertos de salsa oscura, de pollos troceados nadando en sus cazuelas; el fuego arde todo color y fiesta y con el vino y el café (que nadie ha pagado) nacen visiones alegres en ojos preocupados; ojos ante los que ahora la vida es musical y misteriosa; ojos encendidos ahora para observar animados los claveles rojos que Lady Bruton (cuyos gestos eran siempre duros) había depositado junto a su plato, de forma que Hugh Whitbread, en paz con el universo entero y al mismo tiempo completamente seguro de su categoría, dejó su tenedor y dijo: -¿No crees que resultarían encantadores sobre tu encaje?”

“...a hullámok monoton bukdosása a parton, mely többnyire ütemesen s megnyugtatóan kísérte gondolatait, ahogy ott ült gyermekei körében, már-már vigasztaló ritmust verve, s akár ha a természet hajtogatná egy régi-régi bölcsődal szavaival: "Nem hagylak el - megvédelek...", máskor viszont hirtelen, váratlanul, s főleg ha figyelme elterelődött épp a pillanatnyi teendőről, mintha egyáltalán nem sugallt volna ily vigaszos jelentést, nem, de mint kísérteties dobok pergése, szólt az élet mértékeiről, hogy aki hallja, a pusztulásra gondoljon, itt e szigetére, a tenger ölén, s őt magát arra figyelmezteti, hogy napjai hiába telnek hol ezzel, hol azzal a valóságos kis teendővel, anyagtalanok csak, mint a szivárvány - ez a monotonság, mely tompán rejlezett eleddig más hangok mögé, most egyszerre ott dübörgött, mint hatalmas üregben, a fülében, s ő maga óhatatlan borzadállyal kapta fel nyomban a fejét.”

“But Time, unfortunately, though it makes animals and vegetables bloom and fade with amazing punctuality, has no such simple effect upon the mind of man. The mind of man, moreover, works with equal strangeness upon the body of time. An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be accurately represented on the timepiece of the mind by one second.”

Book:Orlando

“The mind of man works with strangeness upon the body of time. An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be accurately represented by the timepiece of the mind by one second. This extraordinary discrepancy between time on the clock and time in the mind is less known than it should be, and deserves fuller investigation.”

Book:Orlando

“Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an hour--landing at the other end without a single hairpin in one's hair! Shot out at the feet of God entirely naked! Tumbling head over heels in the asphodel meadows like brown paper parcels pitched down a shoot in the post office! With one's hair flying back like the tail of a race-horse. Yes, that seems to express the rapidity of life, the perpetual waste and repair; all so casual, all so haphazard ...”

“...the letters begin to cross vast spaces in slow sailing ships and everything becomes still more protracted and verbose, and there seems no end to the space and the leisure of those early nineteenth century days, and faiths are lost and the life of Hedley Vicars revives them; aunts catch cold but recover; cousins marry; there is the Irish famine and the Indian Mutiny, and both sisters remain, to their great, but silent grief, for in those days there were things that women hid like pearls in their breasts, without children to come after them. Louisa, dumped down in Ireland with Lord Waterford at the hunt all day, was often very lonely; but she stuck to her post, visited the poor, spoke words of comfort (‘I am sorry indeed to hear of Anthony Thompson's loss of mind, or rather of memory; if, however, he can understand sufficiently to trust solely in our Saviour, he has enough’) and sketched and sketched. Thousands of notebooks were filled with pen and ink drawings of an evening, and then the carpenter stretched sheets for her and she designed frescoes for schoolrooms, had live sheep into her bedroom, draped gamekeepers in blankets, painted Holy Families in abundance, until the great Watts exclaimed that here was Titian's peer and Raphael's master! At that Lady Waterford laughed (she had a generous, benignant sense of humour); and said that she was nothing but a sketcher; had scarcely had a lesson in her life—witness her angel's wings, scandalously unfinished. Moreover, there was her father's house for ever falling into the sea; she must shore it up; must entertain her friends; must fill her days with all sorts of charities, till her Lord came home from hunting, and then, at midnight often, she would sketch him with his knightly face half hidden in a bowl of soup, sitting with her notebook under a lamp beside him. Off he would ride again, stately as a crusader, to hunt the fox, and she would wave to him and think, each time, what if this should be the last? And so it was one morning. His horse stumbled. He was killed. She knew it before they told her, and never could Sir John Leslie forget, when he ran down-stairs the day they buried him, the beauty of the great lady standing by the window to see the hearse depart, nor, when he came back again, how the curtain, heavy, Mid-Victorian, plush perhaps, was all crushed together where she had grasped it in her agony.”

“Pomimo wszystko zdołała sprawić, że jej szkic o postaci dziekana Swifta stawał się coraz bardziej widoczny, a trzy gwiazdki znów rozbłysły całkiem wyraźnie, choć już nie jasnym blaskiem, lecz znękaniem i krwią, jakby ten człowiek, ten wielki pan Brinsley, przez to tylko, że mówiąc (o swoim szkicu, o sobie oraz, ze śmiechem, o pewnej dziewczynie), wyrywał musze skrzydełka, osnuł jej jasne życie chmurą i na zawsze ją zdezorientował, zniszczył jej skrzydełka na grzbiecie, więc kiedy się od niej odwrócił, pomyślała o wieżach i cywilizacji z przerażeniem, a jarzmo, które wprost z niebios opadło na jej barki, zgniotło ją i poczuła się jak naga nieszczęśnica, która poszukiwała schronienia w cienistym ogrodzie, ale wygnano ją, mówiąc: nie, tu nie ma kryjówek ani motyli, w tym świecie, w tej cywilizacji, w kościołach, parlamentach i mieszkaniach. Ta cywilizacja, powiedziała Lily Everit do siebie, przyjmując od pani Bromley miły komplement na temat swojego wyglądu, zależy ode mnie, a pani Bromley powiedziała później, że Lily Everit wyglądała, "jakby na jej barkach spoczywał ciężar całego świata".”

“What is more irritating than to see one’s subject, on whom one has lavished so much time and trouble, slipping out of one’s grasp altogether and indulging — witness her sighs and gasps, her flushing, her palings, her eyes now bright as lamps, now haggard as dawns — what is more humiliating than to see all this dumb show of emotion and excitement gone through before our eyes when we know that what causes it — thought and imagination — are of no importance whatsoever?”

“The nights now are full of wind and destruction; the trees plunge and bend and their leaves fly helter skelter until the lawn is plastered with them and they lie packed in gutters and choke rain pipes and scatter damp paths. Also the sea tosses itself and breaks itself, and should any sleeper fancying that he might find on the beach an answer to his doubts, a sharer of his solitude, throw off his bedclothes and go down by himself to walk on the sand, no image with semblance of serving and divine promptitude comes readily to hand bringing the night to order and making the world reflect the compass of the soul. The hand dwindles in his hand; the voice bellows in his ear. Almost it would appear that it is useless in such confusion to ask the night those questions as to what, and why, and wherefore, which tempt the sleeper from his bed to seek an answer.”

“Não havia ali ninguém. As suas palavras desvaneceram-se. Como um foguete se desvanece. As suas fagulhas, tendo traçado uma trajetória luminosa na noite, entregam-se a ela, a escuridão desce, derrama-se sobre os contornos das casas e torres; colinas sombrias a ruírem e a esfumarem-se. Mas apesar de ocultas, a noite continua cheia delas; privadas de cor, destituídas de janelas, existem mais intensamente, exprimem aquilo que a luz do dia não consegue transmitir - a inquietação a expectativa das coisas amontoadas na escuridão: aconchegadas nas trevas; despojadas do alívio que o amanhecer lhes traz quando, ao lavar as paredes de branco e cinza, ao salientar cada janela, ao erguer a neblina dos campos, mostrando as vacas vermelho-acastanhadas pacificamente a pastar, tudo volta a ser desvendado perante o olhar; tudo volta à vida.”

“Możliwe, że obstając odrobinę zbyt uporczywie przy niższości kobiet, profesor nie miał wcale na uwadze niższości kobiet właśnie, ale raczej swoją własną wyższość. To ją właśnie starał się ochronić - a robił to gorączkowo i może z nieco zbyt wielkim naciskiem, ponieważ jego wyższość stanowiła dlań niesłychanie cenny klejnot.”

“Po stokroć byłoby szkoda, gdyby kobiety pisały tak, jak piszą mężczyźni, żyły, jak żyją mężczyźni lub zaczęty wyglądać tak jak oni - biorąc bowiem pod uwagę różnorodność świata, z trudem wystarczają nam dwie płcie, jak zatem dalibyśmy sobie radę, mając tylko jedną? Czy wykształcenie nie powinno podkreślać i umacniać różnic raczej niż podobieństw? Już i tak mamy zbyt wiele podobieństw i nikt nie wyświadczyłby ludzkości większej przysługi niż jakiś wielki podróżnik, który, wróciwszy ze swych wojaży, obwieściłby nam, że zza gałęzi innych drzew na inne niebo spoglądają inne płcie niż te, które znamy.”

“But she feared time itself... 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, so that she filled the room she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitating one moment on the threshold of her drawing-room, 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.”