Vita Sackville-West Quotes

Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this.

Youth had no beauty like the beauty of an old face; the face of youth was an unwritten page.

I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone. I just miss you...

There had been no moments when she could differentiate and say: Then, at such a moment, I love him; and again, Then, at such another, I loved him not. The stress had been constant. her love for him had been a straight black line drawn right through her life. It had hurt her, it had damaged her, it had diminished her, but she had been unable to curve away from it.

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. It is a sign of vitality.

I don't want to get landed in an affair which might get beyond my control before I knew where I was.
[...] But darling, Virginia is not the sort of person one thinks of in that way. There is something incongruous and almost indecent in the idea. I have gone to bed with her (twice), but that's all. Now you know all about it, and I hope I haven't shocked you [...]

It is no good my telling you. One never believes other people's experiences and one is only very gradually convinced by one's own.

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.

I sing the cycle of my country's year, I sing the tillage, and the reaping sing, Classic monotony, that modes and wars Leave undisturbed, unbettered, for their best Was born immediate, of expediency.

With me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed, and I was prepared to miss you a good deal.

Me dijo que se pasó toda la representación recibiendo de ella más sensaciones y más información sobre las profundidades del alma humana de las que jamás había recibido de fuera de sí misma a través de ningún medio conocido como la literatura, la pintura o la música.

It is quite true that you have had infinitely more influence on me intellectually than anyone, and for this alone I love you.

This hour of union with the old woman soothed her like music, like chords lightly touched in the evening, with the shadows closing and the moths bruising beyond an open window. She leaned against the old woman’s knee as a support, a prop, drowned, enfolded, in warmth, dimness, and soft harmonious sounds. The hurly-burly receded; the clangour was stilled…

I came from nowhere, and shall be Strong, steadfast, swift, eternally: I am a lion, a stone, a tree, And as the Polar star in me Is fixed my constant heart on thee. Ah, may I stay forever blind With lions, tigers, leopards, and their kind.

The dusk is heavy with the wine's warm load; Here the long sense of classic measure cures The spirit weary of its difficult pain; Here the old Bacchic piety endures, Here the sweet legends of the world remain.