Goodreads | Pietrus's review

Pietrus's review

[close]

blog this review

Copy/paste the text below into your blog.

<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18517.To_the_Lighthouse?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="To the Lighthouse" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1166958223m/18517.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18517.To_the_Lighthouse?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">To the Lighthouse</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6765.Virginia_Woolf">Virginia Woolf</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5697567?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 "It seemed to her such nonsense--inventing differences, when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that."
 
 "Under the influence of that extraordinary emotion which had been growing all the walk, had begun in the garden when he had wanted to take her bag, had increased in the town when he had wanted to tell her everything about himself, he was coming to see himself, and everything he had ever known gone crooked a little. It was awfully strange."
 
 "And, what was even more exciting, she felt, too, as she saw Mr. Ramsay bearing down and retreating, and Mrs. Ramsay sitting with James in the window and the cloud moving and the tree bending, how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach."
 
 "What art was there, known to love or cunning, by which one pressed through those secret chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored?"
 
 "And yet she had said to all these children, You shall go through it all. To eight people she had said relentlessly that (and the bill for the greenhouse would be fifty pounds). For that reason, knowing what was before them--love and ambition and being wretched alone in dreary places--she had often the feeling, Why must they grow up and lose it all? And then she said to herself, brandishing her sword at life, Nonsense. They will be perfectly happy."
 
 "Losing personality, one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir...Often she found herself sitting and looking, sitting and looking, with her work in her hands until she became the thing she looked at--that light, for example."
 
 "It saddened him, and her remoteness pained him, and he felt, as he passed, that he could not protect her, and, when he reached the hedge, he was sad. He could do nothing to help her. He must stand by and watch her. Indeed, the infernal truth was, he made things worse for her....
 "And again he would have passed her without a word had she not, at that very moment, given him of her own free will what she knew he would never ask, and called to him and taken the green shawl off the picture frame, and gone to him. For he wished, she knew, to protect her."
 
 "He never looked at things. If he did, all he would say would be, Poor little world, with one of his sighs."
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/312773?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Pietrus's review
bookshelves: currently-reading
recommended for: The commacly inclined

"It seemed to her such nonsense--inventing differences, when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that."

"Under the influence of that extraordinary emotion which had been growing all the walk, had begun in the garden when he had wanted to take her bag, had increased in the town when he had wanted to tell her everything about himself, he was coming to see himself, and everything he had ever known gone crooked a little. It was awfully strange."

"And, what was even more exciting, she felt, too, as she saw Mr. Ramsay bearing down and retreating, and Mrs. Ramsay sitting with James in the window and the cloud moving and the tree bending, how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach."

"What art was there, known to love or cunning, by which one pressed through those secret c...more "It seemed to her such nonsense--inventing differences, when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that."

"Under the influence of that extraordinary emotion which had been growing all the walk, had begun in the garden when he had wanted to take her bag, had increased in the town when he had wanted to tell her everything about himself, he was coming to see himself, and everything he had ever known gone crooked a little. It was awfully strange."

"And, what was even more exciting, she felt, too, as she saw Mr. Ramsay bearing down and retreating, and Mrs. Ramsay sitting with James in the window and the cloud moving and the tree bending, how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach."

"What art was there, known to love or cunning, by which one pressed through those secret chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored?"

"And yet she had said to all these children, You shall go through it all. To eight people she had said relentlessly that (and the bill for the greenhouse would be fifty pounds). For that reason, knowing what was before them--love and ambition and being wretched alone in dreary places--she had often the feeling, Why must they grow up and lose it all? And then she said to herself, brandishing her sword at life, Nonsense. They will be perfectly happy."

"Losing personality, one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir...Often she found herself sitting and looking, sitting and looking, with her work in her hands until she became the thing she looked at--that light, for example."

"It saddened him, and her remoteness pained him, and he felt, as he passed, that he could not protect her, and, when he reached the hedge, he was sad. He could do nothing to help her. He must stand by and watch her. Indeed, the infernal truth was, he made things worse for her....
"And again he would have passed her without a word had she not, at that very moment, given him of her own free will what she knew he would never ask, and called to him and taken the green shawl off the picture frame, and gone to him. For he wished, she knew, to protect her."

"He never looked at things. If he did, all he would say would be, Poor little world, with one of his sighs."...less

Like this review? yes flag

comments (showing 1-1 of 1)

newest »

date

message 1: by Quark

04/20/2008 06:33AM

Besides the fact that you are a Dostoevsky lover (may I make this assumption?) I became certain that 'twas fate that caused us both to be reading Virginia Woolf at this moment. Mine is 'Orlando', and I'm not afraid of her. Yet.