Mrs. Dalloway

by Virginia Woolf

Roses, she thought sardonically. All trash, m’dear. For really, what with eating, drinking, and mating, the bad days and good, life had been no mere matter of roses,

Still, the sun was hot. Still, one got over things. Still, life had a way of adding day to day.

Every one if they were honest would say the same; one doesn’t want people after fifty;

and it made her life a burden to her, for she so much preferred being left alone to do what she liked in the country,

Clarissa’s letter which he would not read again but liked to think of,

Life was that—humiliation, renunciation.