Vita Sackville-West - All Passion Spent (1931)

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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
There was just time, in this reprieve before death, to indulge herself to the full.... She could lie back against death and examine life.

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

Vita Sackville-West
All the small squalors of the body, known only to oneself, insignificant in youth, easily dismissed, in old age became dominant and entered into fulfilment of the tyranny they had always threatened.

Vita Sackville-West
It is terrible to be twenty, Lady Slane. It is as bad as being faced with riding over the Grand National course. One knows one will almost certainly fall into the Brook of Competition, and break one's leg over the Hedge of Disappointment, and stumble over the Wire of Intrigue, and certainly come to grief over the Obstacle of Love.

Vita Sackville-West
Life is so transitory, Lady Slane, that one must grab it by the tail as it flies past. No good in thinking of yesterday or to-morrow. Yesterday is gone, and to-morrow problematical.

Vita Sackville-West
One might reply that man himself was but a collection of atoms, even as a house was but a collection of bricks, yet man laid claim to a soul, to a spirit, to a power of recording and or perception, which had not more to do with his restless atoms than had the house with its stationary bricks.

Vita Sackville-West