A Sketch of the Past — Vocabulary
Virginia Woolf
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As we walked, to beguile the dulness [of] innumerable winter walks we made up stories, long long stories that were taken up at the same place and added to each in turn.†8 more

He was scrupulously honest, honourable, in the Eton and Balliol sense, but there was more to his scrupulosity than that.†4 more

This seemed enough to cause us perpetual delight.†3 more

It arose—to name some elements at random—from his simplicity, his integrity, his eccentricity—by which I mean he would say exactly what he thought, however inconvenient; and do what he liked.†4 more

Round the walls hung Sir Joshua engravings; in the corner on a pedestal of mottled yellow marble stood the bust of the first Sir James—an eyeless, white man who still presides in the hall of Adrian's house in Regents Park.†5 more

But Stella's death two years later fell on a different substance; a mind stuff and being stuff that was extraordinarily unprotected, unformed, unshielded, apprehensive, receptive, anticipatory.†2 more

By some odd fling in her birth, she had escaped all taint of Duckworth philistinism; she had none of their shrewd middle-class complacency.†2 more

Perhaps if I should revise and rewrite as I intend, I will make the question more exact; and worry out something by way of answer.†1 more

He had been indulged, ever since he broke the flower pot and threw it at his mother (whatever the truth of that story, it ran something like that).†2 more

Looking back, then, at Kensington Gardens, though I can recover incidents, many more than I have patience to describe, I cannot recover, save by fits and starts, the focus, the proportions of the external world.†2 more

Fred Maitland thus resolutely refused to believe, though tactfully instructed by Carry, that Leslie's tempers were more than what he called (in his biography) coloured showers of sparks.†1 more

If I could remember one whole day I should be able to describe, superficially at least, what life was like as a child.†1 more

He cannot have been as severe and melancholy and morose as I make him out.†2 more

But besides these minute separate details, how did I first become conscious of what was always there—her astonishing beauty?3 more

Vanessa, under the eye of Val Prinsep, or Mr Ouless, R.A. or occasionally of the great Sargent himself, made those minute pencil drawings of Greek statues which she brought home and fixed with a spray of odd smelling mixture; or painted a histrionic male model rather like Sir Henry Irving in oils.3 more

They had a house at Well Walk during the Crimean War; for there was an anecdote about watching the soldiers drill on the Heath.†4 more

Was it not the origin of the love half of my ambivalent feeling?†1 more

This leads to a digression, which perhaps may explain a little of my own psychology; even of other people's.†1 more

For it was agreed that it wasn't the poor Maude girls' fault—the handsome dark girls who lived behind the locked gate, scaring duns, were to be pitied for their disreputable parents' discreditable imprisoned lives.†1 more

They were caricatures; they were very simple; they were immensely alive.†2 more