Vita Sackville-West Quotes

Is it better to be extremely ambitious, or rather modest? Probably the latter is safer; but I hate safety, and would rather fail gloriously than dingily succeed.

Prune my ambition to the lowly prayer
That I may drive the furrow of my tale
Straight, through the lives and dignities I know.

That was old age, when people knew everything so well that they could no longer afford to express it save in symbols.

I saw within the wheelwright’s shed The big round cartwheels, blue and red; A plough with blunted share; A blue tin jug; a broken chair; And paint in trial patchwork square Slapping up against the wall; The lumber of the wheelwright’s trade, And tools on benches neatly laid, The brace, the adze, the awl;

Suddenly the word instinct leaves me.

Since one cannot have truth,’ cried Sebastian, struggling into his evening shirt, ‘let us at least have good manners.

Why do we, every one of us, refute the experience of others, preferring to gain our own? Why do we fight against government? Why do I want to be independent of my father? or the Islands independent of Herakleion? or Herakleion, independent of Greece? What’s this instinct of wanting to stand alone, to be oneself, isolated, free, individual? Why does instinct push us towards individualism, when the great well-being of mankind probably lies in solidarity? when the social system in its most elementary form starts with men clubbing together for comfort and greater safety? No sooner have we achieved our solidarity, our hierarchy, our social system, our civilisation, than we want to get away from it. A vicious circle; the wheel revolves, and brings us back to the same point from which we started.

The country habit has me by the heart, For he's bewitched for ever who has seen, Not with his eyes but with his vision, Spring Flow down the woods and stipple leaves with sun, As each man knows the life that fits him best, The shape it makes in his soul, the tune, the tone, And after ranging on a tentative flight Stoops like the merlin to the constant lure.

But oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don't love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defenses. And I don't really resent it.

Homesick we are, and always, for another
And different world.

The only time I thought of Virginia as being eclipsed was when the sun himself shared her darkening and I saw her standing wraithlike on a Yorkshire moor while the shadow swept onwards towards totality

Like a little warm coal in my heart burns your saying that you miss me. I miss you oh so much. How much, you'll never believe or know. At every moment of the day. It is painful but also rather pleasant, if you know what I mean. I mean, that it is good to have so keen and persistent a feeling about somebody.

Lady Roehampton was not a young woman; but she was still, though not without taking a certain amount of trouble, beautiful. This question of the middle-aged woman’s beauty and desirability has never sufficiently been exploited by novelists.

Clive follows me all over the place. Have I been to bed with Virginia yet? If not, am I likely to do so in the near future? If not, will I please give it my attention? As it is high time Virginia fell in love.

But, perversely, the flittering of the butterflies had always remained more important.