“The hostess is our modern Sibyl. She is a witch who lays her guests under a spell.”

— Virginia Woolf , book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 4
Context: The hostess is our modern Sibyl. She is a witch who lays her guests under a spell. In this house they think themselves happy; in that witty; in a third profound. It is all an illusion (which is nothing against it, for illusions are the most valuable and necessary of all things, and she who can create one is among the world's greatest benefactors), but as it is notorious that illusions are shattered by conflict with reality, so no real happiness, no real wit, no real profundity are tolerated where the illusion prevails.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The hostess is our modern Sibyl. She is a witch who lays her guests under a spell." by Virginia Woolf?

Virginia Woolf 382

English writer 1882–1941

Related quotes

“When she listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“I'm not the world's greatest expert, but I would have thought that the wizards, witches, trolls, unicorns,… broomsticks and spells would have given her a clue?' - when J. K. Rowling insisted she wasn't writing fantasy.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

“Was it weird having a witch grandma? Scary? Was she always, like, threatening to cast spells if you were bad?"
"Most of the time she just threatened to send me to my room."
"That doesn't sound so scary to me."
"That's because you haven't met her.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

“She was not an easy woman to categorize or to explain. If I´ve ever known anyone in my life, man or woman, who was unique, it was she. There was nobody like her before or since. Never will be. In every way. In talent, in looks, in character, in temperament. Everything. There sure wasn't anybody who didn't fall under her spell.”

Henry Fonda (1905–1982) American actor

About first wife Margaret Sullavan. Haywire (1977) by Brooke Hayward. Jonathan Cape Ltd., pp. 162-63. ISBN 0224014269.

“For I myself saw the Sibyl indeed at Cumae with my own eyes hanging in a jar; and when the boys used to say to her, "Sibyl, what do you want?"”

Petronius book Satyricon

she replied, 'I want to die."
Sec. 48
In the T. S. Eliot poem, "The Waste Land", Petronius' original Latin and Greek is quoted: Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: ἀποθανεῖν θέλω. The translation generally associated with Eliot's poem is as follows: For with my own eyes I saw the Sibyl hanging in a bottle, and when the young boys asked her, 'Sibyl, what do you want?', she replied, 'I want to die' .
The quote refers to the mythic Cumaean Sibyl who bargained with Apollo, offering her virginity for years of life totaling as many grains of sand as she could hold in her hand. However, after she spurned his love, he allowed her to wither away over the span of her near-immortality, as she forgot to ask for eternal youth.
Satyricon

“Mombi was not exactly a Witch, because the Good Witch who ruled that part of the Land of Oz had forbidden any other Witch to exist in her dominions. So Tip's guardian, however much she might aspire to working magic, realized it was unlawful to be more than a Sorceress, or at most a Wizardess.”

L. Frank Baum book The Marvelous Land of Oz

The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904), Ch. 1 : Tip Manufactures Pumpkinhead
Later Oz novels

“Fuckhead:
The name’s MariKETA.
Go to hell,
The WITCH, doing a creepy spell somewhere right now.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night

“Her gentle limbs did she undress,
And lay down in her loveliness.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Christabel

Part I, l. 237
Christabel (written 1797–1801, published 1816)

“If a Bloggers dies without transforming his/her knowledge to the new generation, the knowledge is meaningless. If an example if a witch could not transform her knowledge to anybody, she makes a hole where she dies.”

Ravindra Prabhat (1969) Hindi poet, scholar, journalist, novelist and short story writer

"The South Asian Bloggers community celebrated the Third Bloggers Conference on 13-14-15th Sept. 2013 at Kathmandu in Nepal ." (13 September 2013) http://www.southasiatoday.org/2013/09/the-indian-bloggers-community.html

“If you really want to upset a witch, do her a favor which she has no means of repaying. The unfulfilled obligation will nag at her like a hangnail.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

“The hostess is our modern Sibyl. She is a witch who lays her guests under a spell.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Virginia Woolf 382

Related quotes

Related topics