Vita Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

Homesick we are, and always, for another
And different world. — Vita Sackville-West

The arts inform as well as stimulate; they challenge as well as satisfy. Their location is not limited to galleries, concert halls and theatres. Their home can be found wherever humans chose to have attentive and vita intercourse with life itself. — Elliot W. Eisner

There is perhaps no clearer testimony to the loss of the public realm in the modern age than the almost complete loss of authentic concern with immortality, a loss somewhat overshadowed by the simultaneous loss of the metaphysical concern with eternity. The latter, being the concern of the philosophers and the vita contemplativa, must remain outside our present considerations. But the former is testified to by the current classification of striving for immortality with the private vice of vanity. Under modern conditions, it is indeed so unlikely that anybody should earnestly aspire to an earthly immortality that we probably are justified in thinking it is nothing but vanity. — Hannah Arendt

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

Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811) records that: The Welch are said to be so remarkably fond of cheese, that in cases of difficulty their midwives apply a piece of toasted cheese to the janua vita [gates of life] to attract and entice the young Taffy, who on smelling it makes most vigorous efforts to come forth. — Mark Forsyth

It is a sad moment when the first phlox appears. It is the amber light indicating the end of the great burst of early summer and suggesting that we must now start looking forward to autumn. Not that I have any objection to autumn as a season, full of its own beauty; but I just cannot bear to see another summer go, and I recoil from what the first hint of autumn means. — Vita Sackville-West

I've never really seen myself as one of the premier guys. I work hard and strive to be one of the best at my position, but never do I tell myself, "I'm one of the best guys." I'm just excited that Vita Coco invited me to be a part of their team with guys like Lynch and Jones. Any time you can be mentioned with guys like Jones and Lynch it's an honor. — Giovani Bernard

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

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

Ambition, old as mankind, the immemorial weakness of the strong. — 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

Vita hominis plus libro valet! A life is worth more than a book. — Rachel Caine

Tota vita nihil aliud quam ad mortem iter est.
The whole of life is nothing but a journey to death. — Seneca The Younger

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

He touched my soul long before I knew what his hands felt like. — Nikki Rowe

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

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

Because of this it has been possible for the play to be read, as it so often has been since the Romantic period, as a credo, an apologia pro vita sua (a justification of his own life), on the part of Shakespeare the dramatist. — William Shakespeare

Flowers really do intoxicate me. — Vita Sackville-West

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

II worshipped dead men for their strength, forgetting I was strong. — 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

They claim they're living the vita apostolica; but you didn't find the apostles feeling each other's bollocks. — Hilary Mantel

I saw Dolce Vita and my mind was blown by it, by the synthesis. I realised I wanted to be a filmmaker and started making films. I was writing screenplays and couldn't get money because my work was so uncommercial. — Rebecca Miller

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

The Saluki is a marvel of elegance. — Vita Sackville-West

Things were not tragic for us then, because although we cared passionately we didn't care deeply. — 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

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

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

Violence, passion, indignation, loyalty, integrity, incorruptibility, shameless egoism, generosity, excitability, energy, a hundred horse-power drive - none of it very subtle: Ethel [Smyth] didn't deal in pastel shades, she went for the stronger colors, the blood-red, anything deep and pumping out of the arteries of the heart. — 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

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

The problem is you bring up the name Elizabeth Taylor, people think of jewelry; they think of husbands; the 'la dolce vita' lifestyle. I'm happy to have gotten to know her when I got to know her. — Firooz Zahedi

Be wicked, be brave, be drunk, be reckless, be dissolute, be despotic, be an anarchist, be a religious fanatic, be a suffragette, be anything you like, but for pity's sake be it to the top of your bent - Live - live fully, live passionately, live disastrously if necessary. Live the gamut of human experiences, build, destroy, build up again! Live, let's live, you and I - let's live as none ever lived before, let's explore and investigate, let's tread fearlessly where even the most intrepid have faltered and held back! — Violet Trefusis

Here's what I like about God: Trees are crooked, mountains are lumpy, a lot of his creatures are funny-looking, and he made it all anyway. He didn't let the aardvark convince him he had no business designing creatures. He didn't make a puffer fish and get discouraged. No, the maker made things - and still does. European film directors often enjoy creative careers, during which their films mature from the manifestos of angry young men to the rueful wisdom of great works by creative masters. Is an afternoon siesta the secret? Is their vita just a little more dolce? We've taken espresso to our American hearts, but we haven't quite taken to the "break" in our coffee breaks. Worried about playing the fool, we forget how to simply play. We try to make our creativity linear and goal oriented. We want our "work" to lead somewhere. We forget that diversions do more than merely divert us. — Julia Cameron

We owned a garden on a hill,
We planted rose and daffodil,
Flowers that English poets sing,
And hoped for glory in the Spring.
We planted yellow hollyhocks,
And humble sweetly-smelling stocks,
And columbine for carnival,
And dreamt of Summer's festival.
And Autumn not to be outdone
As heiress of the summer sun,
Should doubly wreathe her tawny head
With poppies and with creepers red.
We waited then for all to grow,
We planted wallflowers in a row.
And lavender and borage blue, -
Alas! we waited, I and you,
But love was all that ever grew. — Vita Sackville-West

Sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago [Without learning, life is but the image of death] — Dionysius Cato

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

The essence of death is discovered in the gap between one moment ceasing and another one beginning. That essence is the wakefulness that is our true nature. — Enza Vita

I've just stopped talking to you. It seems so strange. It's perfectly peaceful here
they're playing bowls
I'd just put flowers in your room. And there you sit with the bombs falling around you.
What can one say
except that I love you and I've got to live through this strange quiet evening thinking of you sitting there alone.
Dearest
let me have a line ...
You have given me such happiness ... — Virginia Woolf

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

Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this. — Vita Sackville-West

Everywhere bees go racing with the hours, / For every bee becomes a drunken lover, / Standing upon his head to sup the flowers. — Vita Sackville-West

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

There is nothing more lovely in life than the union of two people whose love for one another has grown through the years, from the small acorn of passion, into a great rooted tree — Vita Sackville-West

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. — Vita Sackville-West

The very life which we enjoy is short.
[Lat., Vita ipsa qua fruimur brevis est.] — Sallust

I saw - no, I think the word is beheld - the most wondrous thing in the world. This church was indescribably complex and harmonious; it was like stepping into the mind of God. I was overcome by the desire to worship - a feeling I would not see as adequately articulated until many years later, when I would read Dante Alighieri's description, in his first book, Vita nuova, of the first time he, as a child, saw Beatrice: — Rod Dreher

Whatever experiences we may come across in our spiritual journey we are not any of those experiences but rather the one who is witnessing them, the pure awareness cognizing them without thought. — Enza Vita

I decided to an actress because of the film 'La Dolce Vita.' — Maria Grazia Cucinotta

Woolf worried about the childlessness from time to time, and suffered from the imposed anxiety that she was not, unlike her friend Vita Sackville-West, a real woman. I do not know what kind of woman one would have to be to stand unflinchingly in front of The Canon, but I would guess, a real one. There is something sadistic in the whip laid on women to prove themselves as mothers and wives at the same time as making their way as artists. The abnormal effort that can be diverted or divided. We all know the story of Coleridge and the Man from Porlock. What of the woman writer and a whole family of Porlocks?
For most of us the dilemma is rhetorical but those women who are driven with consummate energy through a single undeniable channel should be applauded and supported as vigorously as the men who have been setting themselves apart for centuries. — Jeanette Winterson

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

It is no good my telling you. One never believes other people's experiencem and one is only very gradually convinced by one's own. — Vita Sackville-West

Among these temperamentally unhappy campers are "reactant" personalities, who focus on what they often wrongly perceive as others' attempts to control them. In one experiment, some of these touchy individuals were asked to think of two people they knew: a bossy sort who advocated hard work and a mellow type who preached la dolce vita. Then, one of the names was flashed before the subjects too briefly to register in their conscious awareness. Next, the subjects were given a task to perform. Those who had been exposed to the hard-driving name performed markedly worse than those exposed to the easygoing name. Even this weak, subliminal attention to an emotional cue that suggested control was enough to get their reactant backs up and cause them to act to their own disadvantage. All relationships involve give-and-take and cooperation, so a person who habitually attends to ordinary requests or suggestions like a bull to a red flag is in for big trouble in both home and workplace. — Winifred Gallagher

Ave Dolce Vita, Rex Regum! Hail Sweet Life, King of Kings! We love you and we believe in you! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all. — Vita Sackville-West

But the soul of man is the actuating principle of the body and makes it exist as a body, unifies it, possesses it, and develops it. The parents prepare the body; God infuses the soul and makes the person. The union of the body and spirit form one being! The original source of Power, Energy, Thought, Action, Love, and Passion comes from the soul united to the body! This Original Energy, which we will call Vita, has three principal manifestations, because man may be considered as related (a) to himself, (b) to humanity, and (c) to the cosmos. — Anonymous

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

Look here Vita - throw over your man, and we'll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I'll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads - They won't stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come. — Virginia Woolf

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

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

My favorite food is macaroni and cheese that my grandma makes. My favorite drink has to be Vita Coco coconut water. — Sloane Stephens

Our lives are a divine expression no matter how messy and weird they may be. How much more meaningful can it get? The source is experiencing itself in form in a conscious, awake way. — Enza Vita

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

I never met a model I didn't like." — Coerte V.W. Felske

It is not you as the ego who moves through life, but that life flows before you, and you are the immutable awareness containing it all. — Enza Vita

How I adore you and want you. You can't know how much ... I love belonging to you
I glory in it, that you alone have bent me to your will, shattered my self-possession, robbed me of my mystery, and made me yours, so that away from you I am nothing but a useless puppet, an empty husk. — Violet Trefusis

Summer makes a silence after spring. — Vita Sackville-West

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

Those who are actively seeking enlightenment will not find it because the act of looking for it is the distraction from it. — Enza Vita

I like muddling things up; and if a herb looks nice in a border, then why not grow it there? Why not grow anything anywhere so long as it looks right where it is? That is, surely, the art of gardening. — Vita Sackville-West

VITA BREVIS
A lifetime
is more
than
sufficiently long
for people to get what there is of it
wrong. — Piet Hein

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

Yes, I miss you, I miss you. — Virginia Woolf

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

I depart from life as from an inn, and not as from my home.
[Lat., Ex vita discedo, tanquam ex hospitio, non tanquam ex domo.] — Marcus Tullius Cicero

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

For the unlearned man knows not what it is to descend into himself, or to call himself to account, nor the pleasure of that suavissima vita, indies sentire se fieri meliorem. — Francis Bacon

All craftsmen share a knowledge. They have heldReality down fluttering to a bench. — Vita Sackville-West

Conceptio culpa Nasci pena Labor vita Necesse mori 'Conception is sin, birth is pain, life is toil, death is inevitable. — Niall Ferguson

Virtue is the highest reward. Virtue truly goes before all things. Liberty, safety, life, property, parents, country, and children are protected and preserved. Virtue has all things in herself; he who has virtue has all things that are good attending him.
[Lat., Virtus praemium est optimum.
Virtus omnibus rebus anteit profecto.
Libertas, salus, vita, res, parentes,
Patria et prognati tutantur, servantur;
Virtus omnia in se habet; omnia assunt bona, quem penes est vertus.] — Plautus

Speed can be fun, productive and powerful, and we would be poorer without it. What the world needs, and what the slow movement offers, is a middle path, a recipe for marrying la dolce vita with the dynamism of the information age. The secret is balance: instead of doing everything faster, do everything at the right speed. Sometimes fast. Sometimes slow. Sometimes in between. — Carl Honore

Mors certa, vita incerta, as Mr. Sloat occasionally declared. Isidore, although he had heard the expression a number of times, retained only a dim notion as to its meaning. After all, if a chickenhead could fathom Latin he would cease to be a chickenhead. — Philip K. Dick

She had blue eyes, but his were BLUE. Not just one shade of blue, either, but a swirl of shades that reminded her of the stretch of ocean between Bella Vita Isle and Nassau where the turquoise waters fell into a deep, fathomless blue. — Emily March

Nothing shows up the difference between the things said or read, so much as the daily experience of it. — Vita Sackville-West

Leonard Woolf's endurance of Virginia's famous frigidity is, we must suppose after the fact, altogether to his credit. Their honeymoon did not bring the amelioration they had hoped for and it is incredibly innocent and moving to think of them discussing it with Vanessa. They wanted to know when she had first had an orgasm. She said she couldn't remember but she knew she had been "sympathetic" from the age of two. Vita Sackville-West said about Virginia, "She dislikes the possessiveness and love of domination in men. In fact she dislikes the quality of masculinity. — Elizabeth Hardwick

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

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

You saved me, you should remember me. — Louise Gluck

I suppose the pleasure of country life lies really in the eternally renewed evidences of the determination to live. — 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

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

Thoughts, by their nature, come and go endlessly in you. But you are not the thought; you are the one seeing the thought, so any thought of who you are cannot be the truth of who you are. — Enza Vita

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

Men of my age live in a state of continual desperation. — Vita Sackville-West

Slavery became the social condition of the laboring classes because it was felt that it was the natural condition of life itself. Omnis vita servitium est. — Hannah Arendt