"...you have neither wife nor child (without any sexual feeling, she longed to cherish that loneliness)..."
— Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)

"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 (To the Lighthouse)

"...(for the setting of her beauty was always that - hasty, but apt)..."
— Virginia Woolf (To the 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 (To the 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 (To the Lighthouse)

"With her foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even as she looked, and then, as she moved and took Minta's arm and left the room, it changed, it shaped itself differently; it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past."
— Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)

"It flattered her, where she was most susceptible of flattery, to think how, wound about in their hearts, however long they lived she would be woven..."
— Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)

"Why then did she do it? She looked at the canvas, lightly scored with running lines. It would be hung in the servants' bedrooms. It would be rolled up and stuffed under a sofa. What was the good of doing it then, and she heard some voice saying she couldn't paint, saying she couldn't create, as if she were caught up in one of those habitual currents in which after a certain time experience forms in the mind, so that one repeats words without being aware any longer who originally spoke them."
— Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)

""Submit to me."

So she said nothing, but looked doggedly and sadly at the shore, wrapped in its mantle of peace; as if the people there had fallen alseep, she thought; were free like smoke, were free to come and go like ghosts. They have no suffering there, she thought."
— Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)

"Beauty had this penalty - it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life - froze it. One forgot the little agitations; the flush, the pallor, some queer distortion, some light or shadow, which made the face unrecognizable for a moment and yet added a quality one saw for ever after."
— Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)

"He lay on his chair with his hands clasped above his paunch not reading, or sleeping, but basking like a creature gorged with existence."
— Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)

"Some things I loved have vanished. A great many others have been given to me"
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Woman Destroyed)

"--There you are. The sight of the changing world is miraculous and heartbreaking, both at the same time.
--But so it is for me too. The heartbreaking side of growing old is not in the things around one but in oneself."
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Woman Destroyed)

"Youth and what the Italians so prettily call stamina. The vigor, the fire, that enables you to love and create. When you've lost that, you've lost everything."
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Woman Destroyed)

"My life was hurrying, racing tragically toward its end. And yet at the same time it was dripping so slowly, so very slowly now, hour by hour, minute by minute. One always has to wait until the sugar melts, the memory dies, the wound scars over, the sun sets, the unhappiness lifts and fades away."
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Woman Destroyed)

"The way I approached a question, my habit of mind, the way I looked at things, what I took for granted - all this was myself and it did not seem to me that I could alter it."
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Woman Destroyed)

"It must feel wonderfully strange when, like Manette, one stands there, the only witness to a vanished world."
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Woman Destroyed)

"(What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.)"
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Woman Destroyed)

"Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to."
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Woman Destroyed)

"Even if one is neither vain nor self-obsessed, it is so extraordinary to be oneself - exactly oneself and no one else - and so unique, that it seems natural that one should also be unique for someone else."
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Woman Destroyed)

"My worst mistake has been not grasping that time goes by. It was going by and there I was, set in the attitude of the ideal wife of an ideal husband. Instead of bringing our sexual relationship to life again I brooded happily over memories of our former nights together."
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Woman Destroyed)

"There is not a single line in this diary that does not call for a correction or a denial...Yes: throughout these pages I meant what I was writing and I meant the opposite; reading them again I feel completely lost...I was lying to myself. How I lied to myself!"
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Woman Destroyed)

"Tragedies are all right for a while: you are concerned, you are curious, you feel good. And then it gets repetitive, it doesn't advance, it grows dreadfully boring: it is so very boring, even for me."
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Woman Destroyed)

"There was once a man who lost his shadow. I forget what happened to him, but it was dreadful. As for me, I've lost my own image. I did not look at it often; but it was there, in the background, just as Maurice had drawn it for me. A straightforward, genuine, "authentic" woman, with out mean-mindedness, uncompromising, but at the same time understanding, indulgent, sensitive, deeply feeling, intensely aware of things and of people, passionately devoted to those she loved and creating happiness for them. A fine life, serene, full, "harmonious." It is dark: I cannot see myself anymore. And what do the others see? Maybe something hideous."
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Woman Destroyed)