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
Our friends - how distant, how mute, how seldom visited and little known. And I, too, am dim to my friends and unknown; a phantom, sometimes seen, often not. Life is a dream surely.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the distance and unfamiliarity that can exist in friendships, highlighting the ephemeral nature of human connections.
Virginia Woolf's quote captures the essence of the complexities in friendships, where even those we consider friends can feel distant or unknown. It suggests that our relationships may often lack depth, leading to a sense of being like phantoms in each other's lives—present yet unengaged. The comparison to life as a dream emphasizes the transient and sometimes illusory quality of our connections, provoking introspection about how well we truly know one another.
Themes
FriendshipConnectionDistanceSelf-ReflectionEphemeral
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of nurturing friendships, one might quote Woolf to emphasize how easily friends can become distant if not tended to.
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
A blessed thing it is to have a friend; one human soul whom we can trust utterly; who knows the best and worst of us, and who loves us in spite of all our faults; who will speak the honest truth to us, while the world flatters us to our face, and laughs at us behind our back; who will give us counsel and reproof in a day of prosperity and self-conceit; but who, again, will comfort and encourage us in days of difficulty and sorrow, when the world leaves us alone to fight our own battle as we can.
Charles KingsleyRead
Dogs are easier to love than people; they're certainly more dependable. Once they love you, that's it. A true friend in life is a dog.
Joan RiversRead
You had been a paper boy to me all these years - two dimensions as a character on the page and two different, but still flat, dimensions as a person. But that night you turned out to be real.
John GreenRead
Conversation with a friend will only bear good fruit of knowledge when both think only of the matter under consideration and forget that they are friends.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
In high seas or in low seas, I'm gonna be your friend... I'm gonna be your friend. In high tide or in low tide, I'll be by your side... I'll be by your side.
Bob MarleyRead
There's something about losing friends, particularly young people, where it's not something that you get over. I don't believe there's a healing process.
Chris CornellRead