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Archive for the ‘quotes’ Category

It’s Valentine’s Day. And in Virginia Woolf’s Diary: Volume 2, there is no entry for Feb. 14, 1923, 100 years ago today. So instead I have pulled a quote from her Feb. 14, 1922, diary, 99 years ago.

In it, she does not mention Valentine’s Day, but she does share a bit of detail about her dinner at Hogarth House, their home in Richmond from 1915-1924.

We dine over the fire. L. has his tray on a little stool. We are as comfortable as cottagers (looked at through the window) . . . Diary: Volume 2, pg. 161.

The fireplace in the dining room at Monk’s House, the Woolf’s summer home in Sussex from 1919 until their deaths.

 

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In my little corner of Ohio, it is unseasonably warm today. And while I haven’t walked around my garden to see what spring blossoms might be coming up early, I did peruse Virginia Woolf’s diary entry made one hundred years ago today. In it, she does something like that.

On Feb. 10, 1923, while living in Richmond, Woolf wrote a long diary entry. On that day, she included her observations of the first signs of spring and the weather as she walked to the local cemetery, along with details of her recently developed daily schedule:

The spring the spring, I sing in imitation of Wagner, & saw a gorze bush set with soft yellow buds. Then we got into the Park, where the rain drove dogs & humans home, & so back on the stroke of three. It is now our plan (a day old) to walk from 2 to 3; print from 3 to 5; delay our tea; & so make headway. – Diary: Volume 2, pg. 233.

She also relates an earlier conversation with Mary* in which she discussed her mood that winter, which she thought had been affected by the genre of writing in which she had been involved:

But I suppose I talked most, & about myself. How I’d been depressed since Jan. 3rd. We ran it to earth, I think, by discovering that I began journalism on that day. Last Thursday, I think, I returned to fiction, to the instant nourishment & well being of my entire day. – Diary: Volume 2, pg. 234.

*Mary is not identified in this entry in Volume 2 of the diary, although she is likely Mary Hutchinson, as Alice Lowe mentions in the comments below.

Early spring blooms picked and arranged by my granddaughter when she was just 10.

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I use the app Insight Timer on pretty much a daily basis. The app features a quote from a famous person each day. What a nice surprise when I saw that today’s quote was from Virginia Woolf.

The quote, certainly a source of inspiration, comes from The Waves (1931). The full text reads:

I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am rooted, but I flow.

Here is a screenshot of the quote as it appeared on the app. 

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2018 Virginia Woolf quote winner

The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain has released its shortlist of favorite quotes, as submitted by readers as part of #DallowayDay celebrations in June.

Visit the VWSGB Facebook page to vote for your top choice or email your vote to smhall123@yahoo.co.uk.

Last year’s winner was the quote at right from A Room of One’s Own.

  1. As a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world. – Three Guineas
  2. If life has a base that it stands upon, if it is a bowl that one fills and fills and fills – then my bowl without a doubt stands upon this memory … It is of lying half asleep, half awake, in bed in the nursery at St Ives. It is of hearing the waves breaking, one, two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach; and then breaking, one two, one two, behind a yellow blind. It is of hearing the blind draw its little acorn across the floor as the wind blew the blind out. It is of lying and hearing this splash and seeing this light, and feeling, it is almost impossible that I should be here, of feeling the purest ecstasy I can conceive. – “A Sketch of the Past”
  3. What is the meaning of life? That was all – a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark … – To the Lighthouse
  4. It is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex … one must be woman–manly or man-womanly. – A Room of One’s Own
  5. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death! – The Waves

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The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain is asking you to share your favorite Woolf quote by posting it on their Facebook page or submitting it via email. Here is the scoop:

“Send in a Woolf quotation, from any of her books. We’ll compile a shortlist and ask you to vote for one of them, and the winning quotation will be posted on this page. It will be interesting to see whether it’s the same as last year, or a different one.

If you can’t quite remember the exact words, we’ll probably be able to help you out – don’t worry if you get them slightly wrong.

So get out your Woolf books and hunt down your favourite quotation (or one of them). You can put it in a public post or email your quote to smhall123@yahoo.co.uk”

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