Vita Sackville-West Quotes

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 [...]

The fount of joy was bubbling in thine eyes,
Dancing was in thy feet,
And on thy lips a laugh that never dies,
Unutterably sweet.
Dance on! for ever young, for ever fair,
Lightfooted as a frightened bounding deer,
Thy wreath of vine-leaves twisted in thy hair,
Through all the changing seasons of the year...

I am not a simpleton', he said, 'nor am I a childish old man. I dislike childishness and all such rubbish. I feel nothing but impatience with the people who pretend that the world is other than it is. The world, Lady Slane, is pitiably horrible. It is horrible because it is based upon competitive struggle - and really one does not know whether to call the basis of that struggle a convention or a necessity. Is it some extraordinary delusion, or is it a law of life?

Henry by the compulsion of love had cheated her of her chosen life, yet he had given her another life, an ample life, a life in touch with the greater world, if that took her fancy; or a life, alternatively, pressed close up against her own nursery. For a life of her own, he had substituted his life with its interests, or the lives of her children with their potentialities. He assumed that she might sink herself in either, if not both, with equal joy. It had never occurred to him that she might prefer simply to be herself.

You have my full permission.

I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal.

Remembrance clamoured in him: 'She was wild and free,
Magnificent in giving; she was blind
To gain or loss, and, loving, loved but me, — but me!

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

No, I am in no muddles [...] Virginia – not a muddle exactly; she is a busy and sensible woman. But she does love me, and I did sleep with her at Rodmell. That does not constitute a muddle though.

Numbers exist in the void; it is impossible to imagine the destruction of numbers, even though you imagine the destruction of the universe.

I sing once more
The mild continuous epic of the soil

Who could so watch, and not forget the rack Of wills worn thin and thought become too frail, Nor roll the centuries back — And feel the sinews of his soul grow hale, And know himself for Rome's inheritor?

If I had only loved your flesh And careless damned your soul to Hell, I might have laughed and loved afresh, And loved as lightly and as well, And little more to tell.

Lunched with Virginia in Tavistock Square, where she has just arrived. The first time that I have been alone with her for long. Went on to see Mama, my head swimming with Virginia.

Aparentemente no tenía opiniones: no tenía más que estados de ánimo a cuya intensidad arrolladora solo igualaba la velocidad con la que sucedían. No se acostumbraba a su impermanencia; cualquiera que fuera su condición mental del momento, al instante creía ver en ella una visión asentada de la vida. Súbitamente alarmado cuando ese estado le abandonaba, enseguida pasaba a otro, con olvidadizo optimismo.