“If we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women…”

— Virginia Woolf , book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is …" by Virginia Woolf?

Virginia Woolf 382

English writer 1882–1941

Related quotes

“The contradiction is this: man rejects the world as it is, without accepting the necessity of escaping it. In fact, men cling to the world and by far the majority do not want to abandon it.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

Part 4: Rebellion and Art
The Rebel (1951)

“We know as little of a supreme being as of Matter. But there is as little doubt of the existence of a supreme being as of Matter. The world beyond is reality, and experiential fact. We only don't understand it.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Letter to Morton Kelsey (1958) as quoted by Morton Kelsey, Myth, History & Faith: The Mysteries of Christian Myth & Imagination (1974) Ch.VIII

“With the aid of our transmitter, we heard a marvelous report on our fighting by the Shavit radio station. The fact that we are remembered beyond the ghetto walls encourages us in our struggle. Peace go with you my friend! Perhaps we may still meet again! The dream of my life has risen to become fact. Self-defense in the Ghetto will have been a reality. Jewish armed resistance and revenge are facts! I have been a witness to the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish men of battle.”

Mordechai Anielewicz (1919–1943) Leader of the Jewish Combat Organization

“We have to face the fact that most men and women out there are more stale than they know, more bored than they care to admit.”

John W. Gardner (1912–2002) American politician

Quoted in "Self Renewal" (1964).

“Men are unequal in all their relations with the things of this world, without exception. The only thing that is identical in all men is the presence of a link with the reality outside the world.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation (1943)
Context: It is impossible to feel equal respect for things that are in fact unequal unless the respect is given to something that is identical in all of them. Men are unequal in all their relations with the things of this world, without exception. The only thing that is identical in all men is the presence of a link with the reality outside the world.
All human beings are absolutely identical in so far as they can be thought of as consisting of a centre, which is an unquenchable desire for good, surrounded by an accretion of psychical and bodily matter.