For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, our self, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flicked spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping.

— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought…was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained -at last!- the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence,- the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.

— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

It was a splendid morning too. Like the pulse of a perfect heart, life struck straight through the streets. There was no fumbling- no hesitation.

— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

So on a summer’s day waves collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall; and the whole world seems to be saying “that is all” more and more ponderously, until even the heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach says too, That is all. Fear no more, says the heart. Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall.

— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

But that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home, of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself.

— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

…Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable.

— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway