Orlando Quotes

“Rosalind is your love's name?

ORLANDO: Yes, just.

JAQUES: I do not like her name.

ORLANDO: There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Now tell me how long you would have her after you have possessed her.

ORLANDO
Forever and a day.

ROSALIND
Say “a day” without the “ever.” No, no, Orlando, men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives. I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock- pigeon over his hen, more clamorous than a parrot against rain, more newfangled than an ape, more giddy in my desires than a monkey. I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and I will do that when you are disposed to be merry. I will laugh like a hyena, and that when thou art inclined to sleep.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“In the words of Mr Thierry Coup of Warner Bros: 'We are taking the most iconic and powerful moments of the stories and putting them in an immersive environment. It is taking the theme park experience to a new level.' And of course I wish Thierry and his colleagues every possible luck, and I am sure it will be wonderful. But I cannot conceal my feelings; and the more I think of those millions of beaming kids waving their wands and scampering the Styrofoam turrets of Hogwartse_STmk, and the more I think of those millions of poor put-upon parents who must now pay to fly to Orlando and pay to buy wizard hats and wizard cloaks and wizard burgers washed down with wizard meade_STmk, the more I grind my teeth in jealous irritation.

Because the fact is that Harry Potter is not American. He is British. Where is Diagon Alley, where they buy wands and stuff? It is in London, and if you want to get into the Ministry of Magic you disappear down a London telephone box. The train for Hogwarts goes from King's Cross, not Grand Central Station, and what is Harry Potter all about? It is about the ritual and intrigue and dorm-feast excitement of a British boarding school of a kind that you just don't find in America. Hogwarts is a place where children occasionally get cross with each other—not 'mad'—and where the situation is usually saved by a good old British sense of HUMOUR. WITH A U. RIGHT? NOT HUMOR. GOTTIT?”
― Boris Johnson

“I am growing up. I am losing some illusions, perhaps to acquire others.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“I want you to know that I have nothing against Orlando, though you are, of course, far more likely to get shot or robbed there than in London.”
― Boris Johnson

“Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“Here she tossed her foot impatiently, and showed an inch or two of calf. A sailor on the mast, who happened to look down at the moment, started so violently that he missed his footing and only saved himself by the skin of his teeth. 'If the sight of my ankles means death to an honest fellow who, no doubt, has a wife and family to support, I must, in all humanity, keep them covered,' Orlando thought. Yet her legs were among her chieftest beauties. And she fell to thinking what an odd pass we have come to when all a woman's beauty has to be kept covered lest a sailor fall from a mast-head. 'A pox on them!' she said, realizing for the first time what, in other circumstances, she would have been taught as a child, that is to say, the sacred responsibilities of womanhood...”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“You are full of pretty answers. Have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths' wives and conned them out of rings?”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Terror doesn't change people from gay to straight. It just hurts innocent people.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“These selves of which we are built up, one on top of another, as plates are piled on a waiter's hand, have attachments elsewhere, sympathies, little constitutions and rights of their own, call them what you will (and for many of these things there is no name) so that one will only come if it is raining, another in a room with green curtains, another when Mrs Jones is not there, another if you can promis it a glass of wine —and so on; for verybody can multiply from his own experience the different terms which his different selves have made with him—and some are too wildly ridiculous to be mentioned in print at all.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“At length the colour on her cheeks resumed its stability and it seemed as if the spirit of the age—if such indeed it were—lay dormant for a time. Then Orlando felt in the bosom of her shirt as if for some locket or relic of lost affection, and drew out no such thing, but a roll of paper, sea-stained, blood-stained, travel-stained—the manuscript of her poem, 'The Oak Tree'. She had carried this about with her for so many years now, and in such hazardous circumstances, that many of the pages were stained, some were torn, while the straits she had been in for writing paper when with the gipsies, had forced her to overscore the margins and cross the lines till the manuscript looked like a piece of darning most conscientiously carried out. She turned back to the first page and read the date, 1586, written in her own boyish hand. She had been working at it for close three hundred years now. It was time to make an end. Meanwhile she began turning and dipping and reading and skipping and thinking as she read, how very little she had changed all these years. She had been a gloomy boy, in love with death, as boys are; and then she had been amorous and florid; and then she had been sprightly and satirical; and sometimes she had tried prose and sometimes she had tried drama. Yet through all these changes she had remained, she reflected, fundamentally the same.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“The sound of the trumpets died away and Orlando stood stark naked. No human being since the world began, has ever looked more ravishing. His form combined in one the strength of a man and a woman’s grace. As he stood there, silver trumpets prolonged their note, as if reluctant to leave the lovely sight which their blast had called forth; and Chastity, Purity, and Modesty, inspired, no doubt, by Curiosity, peeped in at the door and threw a garment like a towel at the naked form which, unfortunately, fell short by several inches. Orlando looked at himself up and down in a long looking-glass, without showing any signs of discompose, and went presumably, to his bath.

We many take advantage of this pause in the narrative to make certain statements. Orlando had become a woman - there is no denying it. But in every other respect, Orlando remained precisely as he had been. The change in sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity. Their faces remained, as their portraits prove, practically the same. His memory - but in the future we must, for convention’s sake, say ‘her’ for ‘his’, and ‘she’ for ‘he’ - her memory then, went back through all the events of her past life without encountering any obstacle. Some slight haziness there may have been, as if a few dark spots had fallen into the clear pool of memory; certain things had become a little dimmed; but that was all. The change seemed to have been accomplished painlessly and completely and in such a way that Orlando herself showed no surprise at it. Many people, taking this into account, and holding that such a change in sex is against nature, have been at great pains to prove (1) that Orlando has always been a woman, (2) that Orlando is at this moment a man. Let biologists and psychologists determine. It is enough for us to state the simple fact; Orlando was a man till the age of thirty; when he became a woman and has remained so ever since.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away, and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder. To put it in a nutshell, leaving the novelist to smooth out the crumpled silk and all its implications, he was a nobleman afflicted with a love of literature. Many people of his time, still more of his rank, escaped the infection and were thus free to run or ride or make love at their own sweet will. But some were early infected by a germ said to be bred of the pollen of the asphodel and to be blown out of Greece and Italy, which was of so deadly a nature that it would shake the hand as it was raised to strike, and cloud the eye as it sought its prey, and make the tongue stammer as it declared its love. It was the fatal nature of this disease to substitute a phantom for reality, so that Orlando, to whom fortune had given every gift--plate, linen, houses, men-servants, carpets, beds in profusion--had only to open a book for the whole vast accumulation to turn to mist. The nine acres of stone which were his house vanished; one hundred and fifty indoor servants disappeared; his eighty riding horses became invisible; it would take too long to count the carpets, sofas, trappings, china, plate, cruets, chafing dishes and other movables often of beaten gold, which evaporated like so much sea mist under the miasma. So it was, and Orlando would sit by himself, reading, a naked man.”
― Virginia Woolf

“She remembered how, as a young man, she had insisted that women must be obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled. "Now I shall have to pay in my own person for those desires," she reflected; "for women are not (judging by my own short experience of the sex) obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled by nature. They can only attain these graces, without which they may enjoy none of the delights of life, by the most tedious discipline. There's the hairdressing," she thought, "that alone will take an hour of my morning, there's looking in the looking-glass, another hour; there's staying and lacing; there's washing and powdering; there's changing from silk to lace and from lace to paduasoy; there's being chaste year in and year out...”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“What made the process still longer was that it was profusely illustrated, not only with pictures, as that of old Queen Elizabeth, laid on her tapestry couch in rose-coloured brocade with an ivory snuff-box in her hand and a gold-hilted sword by her side, but with scents — she was strongly perfumed — and with sounds; the stags were barking in Richmond Park that winter’s day. And so, the thought of love would be all ambered over with snow and winter; with log fires burning; with Russian women, gold swords, and the bark of stags; with old King James’ slobbering and fireworks and sacks of treasure in the holds of Elizabethan sailing ships. Every single thing, once he tried to dislodge it from its place in his mind, he found thus cumbered with other matter like the lump of glass which, after a year at the bottom of the sea, is grown about with bones and dragon-flies, and coins and the tresses of drowned women.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“ადრეული აპრილის ნათელი ღამე იდგა. უთვალავი ვარსკვლავის ციმციმი ახალი მთვარის ვერცხლისფერ შუქს შერწყმოდა, რასაც, თავის მხრივ, ქუჩის ლამპიონების განათება ამყარებდა. და ეს შუქი განუზომლად ამშვენებდა ადამიანების სახეებს და მისტერ ვრენის ხუროთმოძღვრებას. ყველაფერი თავისი უფაქიზესი იერით გამოკვეთილიყო, და მაინც, ისეთი გრძნობა იქმნებოდა, თითქოს სადაცაა ყველაფერი ერთიანად გალღვებოდა, რომ არა რომელიღაც ვერცხლის წვეთი, რომელმაც ყველა ხაზი გამოკვეთა და სული შთაბერა. განა
საუბარი ასეთივე არ უნდა იყოსო? – ფიქრობდა ორლანდო (და სულელურ ოცნებებს მიეცა); განა ასეთი არ უნდა იყოს საზოგადოება, ასეთი არ უნდა იყოს მეგობრობა, ასეთი არ უნდა იყოს სიყვარული? რადგან უფალმა უწყის რატომ, მაინცდამაინც მაშინ, როცა ადამიანური ურთიერთობების რწმენა გვეკარგება, რაღაც, თავლის და ხეების თუ თივის ზვინის და ოთხთვალა ფორნის შემთხვევითი განლაგება ისეთ სრულყოფილ სიმბოლოს წარმოგვიდგენს იმისას, რაც მიუწვდომელია, რომ ისევ თავიდან ვიწყებთ ძიებას.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“სულ არ მადარდებს, თუკი
არც ერთ სულიერს აღარ შევხვდები ჩემს სიცოცხლეში! შეჰყვირა და ცრემლად დაიღვარა. უთვალავი მოტრფიალე ჰყავდა, მაგრამ ცხოვრება, რომელმაც, კაცმა რომ თქვას, ხომ უნდა შეიძინოს რაღაც მნიშვნელობა, გაურბოდა მას, – ნუთუ ეს არის? – იკითხა, ოღონდ არავინ
ეგულებოდა პასუხის გამცემი, – ნუთუ ეს არის, – მაინც დაამთავრა სათქმელი, – რასაც ადამიანები სიცოცხლეს უწოდებენ?”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? So that all this chatter and praise and blame and meeting people who admired one and did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itself—a voice answering a voice. What could have been more secret, she thought, more slow, and like the intercourse of lovers, than the stammering answer she had made all these years to the old crooning song of the woods, and the farms and the brown horses standing at the gate, neck to neck, and the smithy and the kitchen and the fields, so laboriously bearing wheat, turnips, grass, and the garden blowing irises and fritillaries?”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“Love had meant nothing to him but sawdust and cinders.”
― Virginia Woolf

“El lector que haya intimado con las severidades del trabajo de redactar no necesitará pormenores: cómo escribió y le pareció bueno; releyó y le pareció vil: corrigió y rompió; omitió; agregó, conoció el éxtasis, la desesperación; tuvo sus buenas noches y sus malas mañanas; atrapó ideas y las perdió; vio su libro concluido y se le borró; personificó sus héroes mientras comía; los declamó al salir a caminar; rió y lloró; vaciló entre uno y otro estilo; prefirió a veces el heroico y pomposo; otras el directo y sencillo; otras los valles de Tempe; otras los campos de Kent o de Cornwall; y no llegó nunca a saber si era el genio más sublime o el mayor mentecato de la tierra.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Ly Kim Nguyen recently retired from her career in the education sector and is spending her retirement as peacefully as possible.”
― Ly Kim Nguyen

“Thomas Rauchegger of Cramer & Rauchegger, Inc. is an accomplished financial consultant, licensed Series 7 Securities Representative, a Series 66 holder, a Certified Estate planner, and a life insurance license holder who obtained a Master of Business Administration from the University of Central Florida. In his 15 years of experience, Tom has adopted a philanthropic approach in the areas of finance and estate planning – delivering reliable and trustworthy service to all clients as an advocate for the best-possible retirement years.”
― Thomas Rauchegger

“Tal vez escribir cartas a una mujer sea como […].

Creo que, al enfriar la emoción con lenguaje, las cartas de amor sin amor logran con mayor éxito la contención que vuelve carne y fluido el delirio amoroso. Virginia espera dejar atrás la cama y retomar su batalla contra el mundo: «Y no estás aquí para transformarme». ¿Qué único poder debería tener una mujer sobre otra sino el de transformarla? ¿Os suena de algo, señora?
En sus cartas Virginia le reclama a Vita que la acuse de no tener sentimientos o de inventarse «frases encantadoras» que «le restan aspectos a la realidad». Sobra vida en Vita”.
[...]
¿Qué puedo decir sobre eso sino sentirme más Vita que Virginia y a veces más Virginia que Vita? ¿En cuál de ellas se reconoce usted?
Virginia insiste en que ella intenta decir lo que siente. Pero entiendo que no sea suficiente para Vita, que busca algo más. Woolf aúlla por historias frescas. Y Vita las tiene, las genera, las encarna.
[...]
Todo lo que latió en el encuentro entre estas dos mujeres, pero lo que se recordará será un gran libro, mi bien, otro libro de Virginia Woolf (y este puñado de cartas como anexo, un mapa alternativo de lectura). Ningún libro de Vita. Que salió a juguetear en los bosques con Mary Campbell, con Mary Carmichael o Mary Seton, mientras Virginia parecía celebrar sus trucos y reírle las gracias con deleite: «Ninguna de esas soy yo, maldita seas. En fin». Tan distante, tan razonable, tan, en fin, europea”
[...]
Perdone que me desvíe con asuntos mundanos. Perdone que centre todo en el amor. Es verdad, parece un vicio sentir y resentir que haya sido una mujer la que derribara más muros que nadie
[...]
Quizá solo he querido regalarle estas cartas para invitarla a poner una vela en el altar fascinante de la creación colaborativa que es la pasión lésbica, tan parecida al deseo por una misma. Dígame por favor si me invento este romance porque entonces saldré a celebrarlo.

Su burra Gabriela W.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Three, 1923-1928