... pure honesty is a doubtful quality; it means often lack of imagination.

I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.

The spring without a leaf to toss, bare and bright like a virgin fierce in her chastity, scornful in her purity, was laid out on fields wide-eyed and watchful and entirely careless of what was done or thought by the beholders.

Never pretend that the things you haven't got are not worth having.

After that, how unbelievable death was! - that is must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all.

...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.

Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the earth.