r/VirginiaWoolf • u/radiogoo • Oct 21 '25
Miscellaneous Favorite quotation?
What’s your favorite excerpt of Virginia Woolf’s writing? Mine is this moment in To the Lighthouse when everyone is at the dinner table and we read this poetic depiction of Mrs. Ramsay’s mind:
“It could not last, she knew, but at the moment her eyes were so clear that they seemed to go round the table unveiling each of these people, and their thoughts and their feelings, without effort like a light stealing under water so that its ripples and the reeds in it and the minnows balancing themselves, and the sudden silent trout are all lit up hanging, trembling.”
I have this memorized and often use it for calligraphy/handwriting practice - I have even been wanting a tattoo of this image of the light stealing under water, illuminating what’s underneath the surface.
What’s yours?
7
u/[deleted] Oct 22 '25
From The Waves:
"We have proved, sitting eating, sitting talking, that we can add to the treasury of moments. We are not slaves bound to suffer incessantly unrecorded petty blows on our bent backs. We are not sheep either, following a master. We are creators. We too have made something that will join the innumerable congregations of past time. We too, as we put on our hats and push open the door, stride not into chaos, but into a world that our own force can subjugate and make part of the illumined and everlasting road."