1. “She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on.”
2. “What a lark! What a plunge!”
3. “She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa anymore.”
4. “She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.”
5. “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun.”
6. “She felt… how 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 with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach.”
7. “There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.”
8. “She was not old yet. She had just broken into her fifty-second year.”
9. “Moments like this are buds on the tree of life.”
10. “She might have married almost anyone. For marriage, though a thing of nature and tradition, can be a very desperate remedy.”
11. “She could see what she lacked. It was not beauty; it was not mind. It was something central which permeated; something warm which broke up surfaces and rippled the cold contact of man and woman, or of women together.”
12. “She could have wept. It was bad—this treasure—hiding one’s name.”
13. “That is what death is, she kept saying; for, she was a child playing with a death mask.”
14. “A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved.”
15. “Everything had gone smash; she herself had gone smash.”
16. “She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street.”
17. “Love, had a thousand shapes. There might be lovers whose gift it was to choose out the elements of things and place them together and so, giving them a wholeness not theirs in life, make of some scene, or meeting of people…an indivisible whole.”
18. “For love, though sight and thought were utterly detached from it, would not be destroyed. She had stabbed herself.”
19. “But what was she dreaming as she looked into Hatchard’s shop window? What was she trying to recover? What image of white dawn in the country, as she read in the book spread open: Fear no more the heat o’ the sun?”
20. “And the dew fell on her forehead, and the light came. All was bright, all was brimming, and splendid like some girl in spring running to meet her lover.”
21. “She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged.”
22. “She always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.”
23. “She could have screamed out aloud, that sense of the moment simply wasting itself eternally while she, Clarissa, muddled it all, and looked out of the window at old Lady Bruton talking nonsense.”
24. “What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air.”
25. “There was an embrace in death.”
26. “Ah, if she could have had her life over again! She would have chosen differently.”
27. “Clarissa, looking at the dove-coloured silk, the empty drawing-room, said, ‘This is what I love.'”
28. “There she was.”
29. “The clock was striking.”
30. “And there the motor-car stood.”
31. “She had to break with something. ‘Here I am,’ she said, ‘crying out with my insides breaking,’ and she walked on.”
32. “She wore flowers, which, he thought, they had sent her, to say they were sorry.”
33. “The long black shadow was stalking over Westminster; the shadow of a man walking behind a woman.”
34. “She watched people; she saw them in a flash. She had an overwhelming desire to talk to somebody, to tell somebody something.”
35. “Oh the relief of it! To sit here, in the morning-room alone, watching the hands of the clock.”
36. “The leaves were falling.”
37. “She thought there were parties, she thought there were friends, she thought there were people.”
38. “Always, always, she had lived with herself.”
39. “And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning—fresh as if issued to children on a beach.”
40. “And she felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.”
Summary of the book:
Mrs. Dalloway is a novel written by Virginia Woolf, first published in 1925. The story takes place over the course of a single day in June 1923 in London, England. The book explores the internal lives and thoughts of its characters, primarily focusing on Clarissa Dalloway, an upper-class woman in her fifties.
The narrative shifts between various characters, delving into their thoughts, memories, and perceptions. Clarissa Dalloway, a society hostess, is preparing for a party she is hosting that evening. As she goes about her day, memories from her past resurface, and she contemplates the choices she has made and the meaning of her life.
Another central character is Septimus Warren Smith, a World War I veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. His experiences during the war have left him mentally fragile, and he is tormented by hallucinations and the feeling of being disconnected from reality. Septimus’s story runs parallel to Clarissa’s, and their paths intersect at various points throughout the day.
Mrs. Dalloway examines themes of time, memory, the nature of consciousness, and the complexities of human relationships. Woolf employs stream-of-consciousness narrative techniques to depict the inner lives of her characters, providing insights into their thoughts and emotions.
The novel delves into the social fabric of post-World War I England, exploring the effects of war, the constraints of societal expectations, and the struggles individuals face in finding meaning and connection in their lives. Through the interior monologues of its characters, Mrs. Dalloway offers a profound exploration of the human condition and the fragility of the human mind.
