Virginia Woolf. The Mark on the Wall

As we face each other in omnibuses and underground railways we are looking into the mirror that accounts for the vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, in our eyes.

Everything’s moving, falling, slipping, vanishing.... There is a vast upheaval of matter.

I understand Nature’s game—her prompting to take action as a way of ending any thought that threatens to excite or to pain.

How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it...

What a scraping paring affair it is to be sure!

Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an hour — landing at the other end without a single hairpin in one’s hair!

Indeed, 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 in any longer.

And the less we honour them as our superstitions dwindle and our respect for beauty and health of mind increases....