#lighthouse

She had some hidden reason of her own for attaching great importance to this choosing what her mother was to wear. What was the reason, Mrs. Ramsay wondered, standing still to let her clasp the necklace she had chosen, divining, through her own past, some deep, some buried, some quite speechless feeling that one had for one's mother at Rose's age. Like all feelings felt for oneself, Mrs. Ramsay thought, it made one sad. It was so inadequate, what one could give in return; and what Rose felt was quite out of proportion to anything she actually was. And Rose would grow up; and Rose would suffer, she supposed, with these deep feelings, and she said she was ready now... ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#age

We go by the lighthouse; paddle out. After we got out, we paddled way down to get the biggest peak. ↗

— George Downing

#biggest #down #get #go #got

Such was the complexity of things. For what happened to her, especially staying with the Ramsays, was to be made to feel violently two opposite things at the same time; that’s what you feel, was one; that’s what I feel, was the other, and then they fought together in her mind, as now. It is so beautiful, so exciting, this love, that I tremble on the verge of it, and offer, quite out of my own habit, to look for a brooch on a beach; also it is the stupidest, the most barbaric of human passions, and turns a nice young man with a profile like a gem’s (Paul’s was exquisite) into a bully with a crowbar (he was swaggering, he was insolent) in the Mile End Road. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#beauty

Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships. ↗

— Charles Simic

#constructing #empty #i #inside #lighthouse

...so now, Mrs. Ramsay thought, she could return to that dream land, that unreal but fascinating place, the Manning's drawing-room at Marlow twenty years ago; where one moved about without haste or anxiety, for there was no future to worry about. She knew what had happened to them, what to her. It was like reading a good book again, for she knew the end of that story, since it had happened twenty years ago, and life, which shot down even from this dining-room table in cascades, heaven knows where, was sealed up there, and lay, like a lake, placidly between its banks. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#life

A fallen lighthouse is more dangerous than a reef. ↗

— Navjot Singh Sidhu

#fallen #lighthouse #more #than

I don't know what happened between the two of you. I don't know if it can be forgiven. The hardest thing always is to forgive yourself. ↗

— Antonia Michaelis

#lighthouse-keeper #mr-knaake #forgiveness

That people should love like this, that Mr. Bankes should feel this for Mrs. Ramsay (she glanced at him musing) was helpful, was exalting. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#love