Vita Sackville West Quotes

See the last orange roses, how they blow / Deeper and heavier than in their prime, / In one defiant flame before they go ... ~ Vita Sackville-West

Like a little warm coal in my heart burns your saying that you miss me. I miss you oh so much. How much, you'll never believe or know. At every moment of the day. It is painful but also rather pleasant, if you know what I mean. I mean, that it is good to have so keen and persistent a feeling about somebody. It is a sign of vitality. ~ Vita Sackville-West

The writer catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt. ~ Vita Sackville-West

However many resolutions one makes, one's pen, like water, always finds its own level, and one can't write in any way other than one's own. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Is it better to be extremely ambitious, or rather modest? Probably the latter is safer; but I hate safety, and would rather fail gloriously than dingily succeed. ~ Vita Sackville-West

But you, oh gardener, poet that you be / Though unaware, now use your seeds like words / And make them lilt with color nicely flung ... ~ Vita Sackville-West

I like owls. I admire their intransigent spirit. I have respected them deeply ever since I met a baby owl in a wood, when it fell over dead, apparently from sheer temper, because I dared to approach it. It defied me first, and then died. I have never forgotten the horror and shame I experienced when that soft fluffy thing (towards which I had nothing but the most humanitarian motives) fell dead from rage at my feet. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Serenity of spirit and turbulence of action should make up the sum of a man's life. ~ Vita Sackville-West

You will get letters, very reasoned and illuminating, from many people; I cannot write you that sort of letter now, I can only tell you that I am shaken, which may seem to you useless and silly, but which is really a greater tribute than pages of calm appreciation ... ~ Vita Sackville-West

I wouldn't commit murder for the sake of an allegory. ~ Vita Sackville-West

There is something intrinsically wrong about letters. For one thing they are not instantaneous ... Nor is this the only trouble about letters. They do not arrive often enough. A letter which has been passionately awaited should be immediately supplemented by another one, to counteract the feeling of flatness that comes upon us when the agonizing delights of anticipation have been replaced by the colder flood of fulfilment. ~ Vita Sackville-West

In 1922 Woolf met the writer Vita Sackville-West, who was to join Vanessa Bell and Leonard Woolf as the most significant people in her life. ~ Jane Goldman

Ambition, old as mankind, the immemorial weakness of the strong. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Prose is a poor thing, a poor inadequate thing, compared with poetry which says so much more in shorter time. ~ Vita Sackville-West

We could never have hit it off for long. There was never anything but love to keep us together. ~ Vita Sackville-West

The public, as a whole, finds reassurance in longevity, and, after the necessary interlude of reaction, is disposed to recognize extreme old age as a sign of excellence. The long-liver has triumphed over at least one of man's initial handicaps: the brevity of life. ~ Vita Sackville-West

As each man knows the life that fits him best,
The shape it makes in his soul, the tune, the tone ~ Vita Sackville-West

Still, no gardener would be a gardener if he did not live in hope. ~ Vita Sackville-West

I think we have got something indestructible between us, haven't we? ~ Vita Sackville-West

I don't know what to say to you expect that it tore my heart out of my body saying goodbye to you. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Women, like men, ought to have their years so glutted with freedom that they hate the very idea of freedom. ~ Vita Sackville-West

II worshipped dead men for their strength, forgetting I was strong. ~ Vita Sackville-West

A flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking; but even a solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it. ~ Vita Sackville-West

She loves in a way that will make her suffer horribly. ~ Vita Sackville-West

I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Among the many problems which beset the novelist, not the least weighty is the choice of the moment at which to begin his novel. ~ Vita Sackville-West

One must be businesslike, although the glass is falling. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Don't mind being as miserable as you like with me - I have a great turn that way myself - [VW] ~ Vita Sackville-West

To hope for Paradise is to live in Paradise, a very different thing from actually getting there. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Nothing and no one in the world could kill the love I have for you. I have surrendered my whole individuality, the very essence of my being to you. I have given you my body time after time to treat as you pleased. All the hoardings of my imagination I have laid bare to you. There isn't a recess in my brain into which you haven't penetrated. I have clung to you and caressed you and slept with you and I would like to tell the whole world that I clamour for you. You are my lover and I am your mistress, and kingdoms and empires and governments have tottered and succumbed before now to that mighty combination
the most powerful in the world. ~ Violet Trefusis

It isn't that I don't like sweet disorder, but it has to be judiciously arranged. ~ Vita Sackville-West

The Heron

Every morning at dawn the heron comes winging across the woods to rob my lake of its trout. It is not a very large lake, and there are not very many trout; soon there will be none at all if the heron continues to breakfast in this fashion. I would not grudge him a reasonable meal occasionally, but he is an indiscriminate and extravagant fisherman who pulls out trout too large for him to swallow and strews them mangled on the bank. The good fisherman, the honest angler, returns his smaller catch to the water; the heron acts contrariwise, failing to return those which are too big to be of any use to him. The other day he was seen struggling with one half way down his throat; and in spite of my liking for herons, especially when they frequent other people's lakes and streams, I confess I wish it had choked him. ~ Vita Sackville-West

I cannot abide the Mr. and Mrs. Noah attitude towards marriage; the animals went in two by two, forever stuck together with glue. ~ Vita Sackville-West

There is always something else to do. A gardener should have nine times as many lives as a cat. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Travel is in sad case. It is uncomfortable, it is expensive; it is a source of annoyance to our friends, and of loneliness to ourselves. ~ Vita Sackville-West

I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn't even feel it. And yet I believe you'll be sensible of a little gap. But you'd clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this - But oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don't love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don't really resent it. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Small pleasures must correct great tragedies, therefore of gardens in the midst of war I bold tell. ~ Vita Sackville-West

I hope you miss me, though I could scarcely (even in the cause of vanity) wish you to miss me as much as I miss you, for that hurts too much, but what I do hope is that I've left some sort of a little blank which won't be filled till I come back. I bear you a grudge for spoiling me for everybody's else companionship, it is too bad. ~ Vita Sackville-West

[On writing:] The most egotistic of occupations, and the most gratifying while it lasts. ~ Vita Sackville-West

There had been no moments when she could differentiate and say: Then, at such a moment, I love him; and again, Then, at such another, I loved him not. The stress had been constant. her love for him had been a straight black line drawn right through her life. It had hurt her, it had damaged her, it had diminished her, but she had been unable to curve away from it. ~ Vita Sackville-West

She walks in the loveliness she made,
Between the apple-blossom and the water
She walks among the patterned pied brocade,
Each flower her son, and every tree her daughter. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Tools have their own integrity ... ~ Vita Sackville-West

The fount of joy was bubbling in thine eyes,
Dancing was in thy feet,
And on thy lips a laugh that never dies,
Unutterably sweet.
Dance on! for ever young, for ever fair,
Lightfooted as a frightened bounding deer,
Thy wreath of vine-leaves twisted in thy hair,
Through all the changing seasons of the year ... ~ Vita Sackville-West

There's no beginning to the farmer's year, / Only recurrent patterns on a scroll / Unwinding ... ~ Vita Sackville-West

Gardening is a luxury occupation: an ornament, not a necessity, of life ... Fortunate gardener, who may preoccupy himself solely with beauty in these difficult and ugly days! He is one of the few people left in this distressful world to carry on the tradition of elegance and charm. A useless member of society, considered in terms of economics, he must not be denied his rightful place. He deserves to share it, however humbly, with the painter and poet. ~ Vita Sackville-West

When sometimes I stroll in silence, with you
Through great floral meadows of open country
I listen to your chatter, and give thanks to the gods
For the honest friendship, which made you my companion
But in the heavy fragrance of intoxicating night
I search on your lip for a madder caress
I tear secrets from your yielding flesh
Giving thanks to the fate which made you my mistress ~ Vita Sackville-West

I believe that the main thing in beginning a novel is to feel, not that you can write it, but that it exists on the far side of a gulf, which words can't cross; that its to be pulled through only in a breathless anguish. [VW] ~ Vita Sackville-West

Cristina, being something of a gardener, knew well enough that certain plants may appear to remain stationary for years while they are really making roots underground, only to break into surprising vigour overhead at a given moment. ~ Vita Sackville-West

I loved you when love was Spring, and May, Loved you when summer deepened into June, and now when autumn yellows all the leaves ... ~ Vita Sackville-West

Forget not bees in winter, though they sleep. ~ Vita Sackville-West

My dear Mr FitzGeorge!' cried Lady Slane. 'You really mustn't talk as though my life had been a tragedy. I had everything that most women would covet: position, comfort, children, and a husband I loved. I had nothing to complain of - nothing.'
'Except that you were defrauded of the one thing that mattered. Nothing matters to an artist except the fulfilment of his gift. You know that as well as I do. Frustrated, he grows crooked like a tree twisted into an unnatural shape. All meaning goes out of life, and life becomes existence - a makeshift. Face it, Lady Slane. Your children, your husband, your splendour, were nothing but obstacles that kept you from yourself. They were what you chose to substitute for your real vocation. You were too young, I suppose, to know any better, but when you chose that life you sinned against the light. ~ Vita Sackville-West

The most noteworthy thing about gardeners is that they are always optimistic, always enterprising, and never satisfied. They always look forward to doing something better than they have ever done before. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Not seeing is half-believing. ~ Vita Sackville-West

I do not like January very much. It is too stationary. Not enough happens. I like the evidences of life, and in January there are too few of them. ~ Vita Sackville-West

How poor and disheartening a thing is experience compared with hope! ~ Vita Sackville-West

My garden all is overblown with roses,/ My spirit all is overblown with rhyme, ~ Vita Sackville-West

The farmer and the gardener are both busy, the gardener perhaps the more excitable of the two, for he is more of the amateur, concerned with the creation of beauty rather than with the providing of food. Gardening is a luxury occupation; an ornament, not a necessity, of life. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Vita Sackville-West is one of my favorite female icons. She was a writer and a prolific gardener, but she also had a relationship with Virginia Woolf, and she was married to Sir Harold Nicolson. She was a woman who lived outside of norms. ~ Gwendoline Christie

It always seemed to me that the herbaceous peony is the very epitome of June. Larger than any rose,
it has something of the cabbage rose's voluminous quality; and when it finally drops from the vase, it
sheds its petticoats with a bump on the table, all in an intact heap, much as a rose will suddenly fall,
making us look up from our book or conversation, to notice for one moment the death of what had
still appeared to be a living beauty. ~ Vita Sackville-West

For the last 40 years of my life I have broken my back, my fingernails, and sometimes my heart, in the practical pursuit of my favourite occupation. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Henry by the compulsion of love had cheated her of her chosen life, yet he had given her another life, an ample life, a life in touch with the greater world, if that took her fancy; or a life, alternatively, pressed close up against her own nursery. For a life of her own, he had substituted his life with its interests, or the lives of her children with their potentialities. He assumed that she might sink herself in either, if not both, with equal joy. It had never occurred to him that she might prefer simply to be herself. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Travel is a private pleasure, since it consists entirely of things felt and things seen ... ~ Vita Sackville-West

The true solitary ... will feel that he is himself only when he is alone; when he is in company he will feel that he perjures himself, prostitutes himself to the exactions of others; he will feel that time spent in company is time lost; he will be conscious only of his impatience to get back to his true life. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Talk of solitude (...). It is the last resort of the civilised: our souls are so creased and soured in meaning we can only unfold them when we are alone. (5/4/1927 - From a Letter to Vita Sackville-West) ~ Virginia Woolf

For a young man to start his career with a love affair with an older woman was quite de rigueur ... Of course, it must not go on for too long. An apprenticeship was a very different thing from a career. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Days I enjoy are days when nothing happens,
When I have no engagements written on my block,
When no one comes to disturb my inward peace,
When no one comes to take me away from myself
And turn me into a patchwork, a jig-saw puzzle,
A broken mirror that once gave a whole reflection,
Being so contrived that it takes too long a time
To get myself back to myself when they have gone. ~ Vita Sackville-West

It is dreadful how I miss you, and everything that everybody says seems flat and stupid. ~ Vita Sackville-West

The wise traveler is he who is perpetually surprised. ~ Vita Sackville-West

A man and his tools make a man and his trade. ~ Vita Sackville-West

The shortest day has passed, and whatever nastiness of weather we may look forward to in January and February, at least we notice that the days are getting longer. Minute by minute they lengthen out. It takes some weeks before we become aware of the change. It is imperceptible even as the growth of a child, as you watch it day by day, until the moment comes when with a start of delighted surprise we realize that we can stay out of doors in a
twilight lasting for another quarter of a precious hour. ~ Vita Sackville-West

The more one gardens, the more one learns; And the more one learns, the more one realizes how little one knows. ~ Vita Sackville-West

And I'll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads - the won't stir by day, only by dark on the river. ~ Virginia Woolf

Flowers really do intoxicate me. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Things were not tragic for us then, because although we cared passionately we didn't care deeply. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Click, clack, click, clack, went their conversation, like so many knitting-needles, purl, plain, purl, plain, achieving a complex pattern of references, cross-references, Christian names, nicknames, and fleeting allusions. ~ Vita Sackville-West

April, the angel of the months, the young love of the year. ~ Vita Sackville-West

In 1925 Woolf began an affair with Sackville-West, who was married to Harold Nicolson, the diplomat and writer, and the development of their close relationship, which does not seem to have undermined either woman's marriage, coincided with Woolf 's most productive years as a writer. ~ Jane Goldman

I just think that when my confidence meets other people's insecurity, that equals Kanye's arrogant. ~ Kanye West

You have to swallow, every day, that you are a secondary being whose worth is measured by an arbitrary, impossible standard, administered ~ Lindy West

In the happy laughter of a theatre audience one can get the most immediate and numerically impressive guarantee that there is nothing in one's mind which is not familiar to the mass of persons living at the time. ~ Rebecca West

I believe that all of us have gangster proclivities and greedy orientations that need accountability. That's why democracies are necessary. We have to have institutions to try to curtail the use of arbitrary power so that our greedy orientations and gangster-like proclivities don't get out of hand. ~ Cornel West

The West sees Iran as an important force in the gulf. ~ Salman Rushdie

I lived in China for 9 years straight. I saw how my Chinese friends benefited and gained much more freedom to determine the course of their lives, their jobs, their creative works, and their identities over the course of a decade. Much of this increased freedom is thanks to economic engagement by the West. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon

It is a quasi-certainty that this persistent belief in progress and modernity, concepts which the political classes of the West are always jabbering about and which are totally obsolete, will never see its objectives occur. The dream will shatter into pieces. Constraining forces, a physical wall, makes this ideology resemble a mass of intellectual stupefaction and belief in miracles. ~ Guillaume Faye

It's alive and well everywhere. Native Americans get a lot of crap in the West and south west. Muslims get treated like crap in just about every country in the Western world lately. Black people are mistreated in some parts of the US still. There are black people who are racist against white people. I've recently encountered someone who decided they couldn't tolerate my presence because I'm catholic, which according them makes me a pedophile, Satan worshipper and a whore.

I've even encountered discrimination from people over seas for being American. Especially with my cousin's friends from England. They were rude to me the entire visit. They thought that I had to be an ignorant, xenophobic, racist slob just because I was from America and they spent most of the time trying to pick a fight with me to prove it.

Racism exists, but don't take the comments you read online seriously. A good 80-90% of those are trolls looking for attention or a bored teenager who thinks it's funny to be an idiot. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Silence is kind of awkward, don't you think?" he said.

Oh. Or not. "No. I'm okay with silence. We're in a library after all. This is the birthplace of silence."

"The library is the birthplace of silence?" David asked.

"All the words are being used by the books. When I was little, that's what I used to think. That people were told to be quiet so that all their words didn't get stolen by the books. I thought books needed words to exist. Well, obviously they do, but I thought they needed spoken words. Yeah … I was always weird."

"And here I thought libraries were quiet because people were trying to study," David whispered.

"That might be another explanation. ~ Kasie West

Even if the sun were to rise from the west, the Bodhisattva has only one way. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

Are you all right?" he asked.
"I'm dead," she drawled. Her hands extended toward him and she wiggled her fingertips spookily. "The spirits of this place command you to leave. ~ Armada West

This is the West. We expect things to be tough out here. ~ Kenn Kaufman

In a world that has lost a sense of sin, one sin remains: Thou shalt not make people feel guilty (except, of course, about making people feel guilty). In other words, the only sin today is to call something a sin. ~ Christopher West

Every human activity, whether it be love, philosophy, art, or revolution, is carried on with a special intensity in Paris. ~ Rebecca West

Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one's own Trojan horse. ~ Rebecca West

Hollywood was like a mouse being followed by a cat called television. ~ Mae West

Compassion comes from a choice and not the liberal definition of a choice - the choice to say I can do with a little less so my brother can have a little more. ~ Allen West

More than England to the British West Indian or even Holland to the Surinamer, France is the mother country to the Martiniquan. ~ V.S. Naipaul

[The satirist] must fully possess, at least in the world of the imagination, the quality the lack of which he is deriding in others. ~ Rebecca West

Everything that the West is today is predominantly because of Africa. ~ Nneka

In the West, especially after World War II, the government came to be seen as so successful that it could fulfill all the obligations that in less modern societies are fulfilled by the family. ~ Lee Kuan Yew