I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.
Virginia WoolfRead
It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed any longer.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects our natural desire to maintain an authentic self-image and to avoid being perceived as something exaggerated or false.
Virginia Woolf suggests that there is an innate instinct in humans to safeguard their true identity from idolization or misrepresentation. She emphasizes how this protection is driven by a fear of being seen as ridiculous or so altered that one becomes unrecognizable to themselves or others. This raises important questions about authenticity and the pressures of societal perceptions.
Themes
AuthenticityIdentitySelf-ImageIdolizationPerception
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech on self-acceptance, this quote can highlight the importance of staying true to oneself.
More from Virginia Woolf
All quotes →Death is woven in with the violets,” said Louis. “Death and again death.”)
Virginia WoolfRead
He began to search among the infinite series of impressions which time had laid down, leaf upon leaf, fold upon fold softly, incessantly upon his brain; among scents, sounds; voices, harsh, hollow, sweet; and lights passing, and brooms tapping; and the wash and hush of the sea.
Virginia WoolfRead
I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts.
Virginia WoolfRead
I do think all good and evil comes from words. I have to tune myself into a good temper with something musical, and I run to a book as a child to its mother.
Virginia WoolfRead
London perpetually attracts, stimulates, gives me a play and a story and a poem, without any trouble, save that of moving my legs through the streets... To walk alone through London is the greatest rest.
Virginia WoolfRead
Similar quotes
Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse.
Joseph BrodskyRead
Everything for me becomes allegory
Charles BaudelaireRead
He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. And call the result common sense.
Julian BarnesRead
What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.
Thomas JeffersonRead
If error is corrected whenever it is recognized as such, the path of error is the path of truth.
Hans ReichenbachRead
A religion made up solely of heightened religious experiences would not be a religion at all. ...The major religious traditions address the mysteries (with or without entheogens), but they have other business to do: widen understanding, give meaning, provide solace, promote loving-kindness, and connect human being to human being.
Huston SmithRead