19 quotes
As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
One can only believe entirely, perhaps, in what one cannot see.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
Society is the most powerful conception in the world and society has no existence whatsoever.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
The hostess is our modern Sibyl. She is a witch who lays her guests under a spell.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
At the age of thirty, or thereabouts, this young Nobleman had not only had every experience that life has to offer, but had seen the worthlessness of them all.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
The trumpeters, ranging themselves side by side in order, blow one terrific blast: —
'THE TRUTH!
at which Orlando woke.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
He — for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it — was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
Some slight haziness there may have been, as if a few dark drops had fallen into the clear pool of memory; certain things had become a little dimmed; but that was all.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
Old Madame du Deffand and her friends talked for fifty years without stopping. And of it all, what remains? Perhaps three witty sayings.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
Better was it to go unknown and leave behind you an arch, a potting shed, a wall where peaches ripen, than to burn like meteor and leave no dust.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
Only those who have little need of the truth, and no respect for it — the poets and novelists — can be trusted to do it, for this is one of the cases where the truth does no exist. Nothing exists. The whole thing is a miasma — a mirage.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
The chief charges against her were (1) that she was dead, and therefore could not hold any property; (2) that she was a woman which amounts to much the same thing ...
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
The sound of the trumpets died away and Orlando stood stark naked. No human being, since the world began, has ever looked more ravishing. His form combined in one the strength of a man and a woman's grace.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
Thus, there 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.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
Two things alone remained to him in which he now put any trust: dogs and nature; an elk-hound and a rose bush. The world, in all its variety, life in all its complexity, had shrunk to that. Dogs and a bush were the whole of it.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)
A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.
Orlando: A Biography (1928)