...so now, Mrs. Ramsay thought, she could return to that dream land, that unreal but fascinating place, the Manning's drawing-room at Marlow twenty years ago; where one moved about without haste or anxiety, for there was no future to worry about. She knew what had happened to them, what to her. It was like reading a good book again, for she knew the end of that story, since it had happened twenty years ago, and life, which shot down even from this dining-room table in cascades, heaven knows where, was sealed up there, and lay, like a lake, placidly between its banks.

My mind works in idleness. To do nothing is often my most profitable way.

The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.

It was the intimacy, a sort of spiritual suppleness, when mind prints upon mind indelibly.

I'm sick to death of this particular self. I want another.

For she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks, between her parents who stood by the lake, holding her life in her arms which, as she neared them, grew larger and larger in her arms, until it became a whole life, a complete life, which she put down by them and said, "This is what I have made of it! This!" And what had she made of it? What, indeed?

When the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning, it satisfies the senses amazingly.