Vita Sackville-West Quotes

Lovers, or potential lovers, ought never to meet before the afternoon.

A man and his tools make a man and his trade.

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.

Someday I’ll write and tell you all the things you mean to me in my mind. Shall I?

Yes, they were kind exceedingly; most mild Even in indignation, taking by the hand One that obeyed them mutely, as a child Submissive to a law he does not understand.

In February, if the days be clear, The waking bee, still drowsy on the wing, Will sense the opening of another year And blunder out to seek another spring.

The Heron

Every morning at dawn the heron comes winging across the woods to rob my lake of its trout. It is not a very large lake, and there are not very many trout; soon there will be none at all if the heron continues to breakfast in this fashion. I would not grudge him a reasonable meal occasionally, but he is an indiscriminate and extravagant fisherman who pulls out trout too large for him to swallow and strews them mangled on the bank. The good fisherman, the honest angler, returns his smaller catch to the water; the heron acts contrariwise, failing to return those which are too big to be of any use to him. The other day he was seen struggling with one half way down his throat; and in spite of my liking for herons, especially when they frequent other people's lakes and streams, I confess I wish it had choked him.

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

Tomorrow I dine with my darling Mrs Woolf at Richmond [...] I love Mrs Woolf with a sick passion. So will you. In fact I don't think I will let you know her.

The works of God, I always felt, were given freely to anyone who could appreciate them whether millionaire or pauper…

I don't know what to say to you expect that it tore my heart out of my body saying goodbye to you.

Only it won’t be an earthquake - not in England, England isn’t seismic - it will be a gradual crumbling.

J'ai toujours pensé qu'il valait mieux plaire beaucoup à une seule personne, qu'un peu à tout le monde.

Simplify life as one might, one could not wholly escape its enormous complication.

Darling, I thought of nothing mean; I thought of killing straight and clean. You're safe; that's gone, that wild caprice, But tell me once before I cease, Which does your Church esteem the kinder role, To kill the body or destroy the soul?