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.

Virginia Woolf
About This Quote

This quote is from the novel "A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man" by James Joyce. It describes, in great detail, the emotions that go through the mind of Stephen Daedalus, an adolescent boy with a passionate love for his female friend, Catherine. Joyce writes: "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." This passage shows how young people can be so in love and so in love with life that they feel it is no longer an individual but something that is happening to them - as if it is happening to everyone all at once. The quote also speaks about how powerful and powerful feelings can be.

Source: To The Lighthouse

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More Quotes By Virginia Woolf
  1. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

  2. Love, the poet said, is woman's whole existence.

  3. Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. <span style="margin:15px; display:block"></span>So I am doing what seems the...

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