To the Lighthouse

by Virginia Woolf

He was incapable of untruth; never tampered with a fact; never altered a disagreeable word to suit the pleasure or convenience of any mortal being, least of all of his own children,

How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it was liking one felt or disliking?

there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know herself by; all was so lavished and spent;

It was a disguise; it was the refuge of a man afraid to own his own feelings, who could not say, This is what I like—this is what I am;

why so brave a man in thought should be so timid in life;

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 and threw one down

And again she felt alone in the presence of her old antagonist, life.

it was extraordinary to think that they had been capable of going on living all these years when she had not thought of them more than once all that time.

She had done the usual trick—been nice. She would never know him. He would never know her.

she need not marry, thank Heaven: she need not undergo that degradation.

Like all stupid people, he had a kind of modesty too, a consideration for what you were feeling,

One ought not to complain, thought Mr Ramsay, trying to stifle his desire to complain to his wife

The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low.

It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling;