For it has to be remembered that crime and poverty had none of the attractions for the Elizabethans that they… — Virginia Woolf
For it has to be remembered that crime and poverty had none of the attractions for the Elizabethans that they have for us. They had none of our modern shame of book leaning, none of our belief that to be born the son of a butcher is a blessing an to be unable to read a virtue; no fancy that what we call ‘life’ and ‘reality’ are somehow connected with ignorance and brutality nor, indeed any equivalent for these two words at all. It was not to seek ‘life’ that Orlando went among them not in quest of ‘reality’ that he left them.
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More from this book
Something, perhaps, we must believe in, and as Orlando, we have said, had no belief in the usual divinities she bestowed her credulity upon great men — yet with a distinction. Admirals, soldiers, statesmen, moved her not at all. But the very thought of a great writer stirred her to such a pitch of belief that she almost believed him to be invisible. Her instinct was a sound one. One can only believe entirely, perhaps, in what one cannot see.
Old Madame du Deffand and her friends talked for fifty years without stopping. And of it all, what remains? Perhaps three witty sayings.
Green in nature is one thing, green in in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.
