8 quotes
There were the eternal problems: suffering; death; the poor.
To the Lighthouse (1927)
A light here required a shadow there.
To the Lighthouse (1927)
For our penitence deserves a glimpse only; our toil respite only.
To the Lighthouse (1927)
Life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay said.
To the Lighthouse (1927)
She alone spoke the truth; to her alone could he speak it. That was the source of her everlasting attraction for him, perhaps; she was a person to whom one could say what came into one's head.
To the Lighthouse (1927)
Mrs Ramsay sat silent. She was glad, Lily thought, to rest in silence, uncommunicative; to rest in the extreme obscurity of human relationships. Who knows what we are, what we feel? Who knows even at the moment of intimacy, This is knowledge? Aren't things spoilt then, Mrs Ramsay may have asked (it seemed to have happened so often, this silence by her side) by saying them?
To the Lighthouse (1927)
Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs Ramsay one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscription on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs Ramsay's knee.
To the Lighthouse (1927)
She had done the usual trick – been nice. She would never know him. He would never know her. Human relations were all like that, she thought, and the worst (if it had not been for Mr Bankes) were between men and women. Inevitably these were extremely insincere.
To the Lighthouse (1927)