To The Lighthouse: The Original Classic Edition by Virginia Woolf - Unabridged and Annotated For Modern Readers and Book Clubs

by Virginia Woolf

To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other people’s feelings, to rendthe thin veils of civilization so wantonly, so brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without replying, dazed and

blinded, she bent her head as if to let the pelt of jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked. There was nothing to be said.

Indeed he seemed to her sometimes made differently from other people, born blind, deaf, and dumb, to the ordinary things, but to the extraordinary things, with an eye like an eagle’s. His understanding often astonished her. But did he notice the flowers? No. Did he notice the view? No. Did he even notice his own daughter’s beauty, or whether there was pudding on his plate or roast beef? He would sit at table with them like a person in a dream. And his habit of talking aloud, or saying poetry aloud, was growing on him, she was afraid; for sometimes it was awkward—

It is cutting off the delicious skins of vegetables. “In which,” said Mr. Bankes, “all the virtue of the vegetable is contained.”

It was windy, so that the leaves now and then brushed open a star, and the stars themselves seemed to be shaking and darting light and trying to flash out between the edges of the leaves.

Thanks to his scientific mind he understood—a proof of disinterested intelligence which had pleased her and comforted her enormously.