If one is to deal with people on a large scale and say what one thinks, how can one avoid melancholy? I donโt admit to being hopeless, though: only the spectacle is a profoundly strange one; and as the current answers donโt do, one has to grope for a new one, and the process of discarding the old, when one is by no means certain what to put in their place, is a sad one.
Virginia WoolfThere is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us, and not we, them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.
Virginia WoolfPublicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it.
Virginia WoolfThere are moments when one can neither think nor feel, she thought, and if one can neithre feel nor think, where's one?
Virginia WoolfThere is no stability in this world. Who is to say what meaning there is in anything? Who is to foretell the flight of a word? It is a balloon that sails over tree-tops. To speak of knowledge is futile. All is experiment and adventure. We are forever mixing ourselves with unknown quantities. What is to come? I know not. But, as I put down my glass I remember; I am engaged to be married. I am to dine with my friends tonight. I am Bernard.
Virginia Woolf