British author Virginia Woolf stated: “There’s a type of unhappiness that comes from realizing an excessive amount of, from seeing the world because it really is. It’s the unhappiness of understanding that life isn’t a grand journey, however a sequence of small, insignificant moments, that love isn’t a fairy story, however a fragile, fleeting emotion, that happiness isn’t a everlasting state, however a uncommon, fleeting glimpse of one thing we will by no means maintain onto. And in that understanding, there’s a profound loneliness, a way of being lower off from the world, from different individuals, from oneself.”
In August and September 2024, various well-liked social media posts attributed a quote about unhappiness and loneliness to Virginia Woolf, the British creator identified for her quite a few novels, quick tales, and essays together with “Mrs. Dalloway” and “A Room of One’s Personal.”
The quote, because it appeared in posts on X (archived), Facebook (archived) and Instagram (archived), learn:
There’s a type of unhappiness that comes from realizing an excessive amount of, from seeing the world because it really is. It’s the unhappiness of understanding that life isn’t a grand journey, however a sequence of small, insignificant moments, that love isn’t a fairy story, however a fragile, fleeting emotion, that happiness isn’t a everlasting state, however a uncommon, fleeting glimpse of one thing we will by no means maintain onto. And in that understanding, there’s a profound loneliness, a way of being lower off from the world, from different individuals, from oneself.
On the time of this writing, one Fb post (archived) that includes the quote had acquired round 16,000 reactions and 900 feedback, a few of which took the quote’s alleged attribution at face worth.
(Fb)
One commenter, for instance, wrote (archived): “The poetic prose of such distinctive brilliance of this author speaks clearly to me a long time after she has handed on.” One other wrote (archived): “The truth of the above quote ought to encourage some to suppose.”
Nevertheless, there was no concrete proof to assist claims that Woolf ever stated or wrote these phrases.
The earliest securely datable submit that includes the quote seemed to be an Aug. 26, 2024, post (archived) by the Fb web page Philosophy Insights. That submit included a line attributing the quote to Woolf’s 1927 novel “To the Lighthouse” — a element omitted from many later posts concerning the quote.
The quote didn’t seem wherever in “To the Lighthouse,” nonetheless. A seek for the time period “unhappiness” within the model of the ebook hosted by the digital library HathiTrust found two appearances of the phrase — neither of which resembled the quote in query.
The quote additionally did not appear in any of the a whole bunch of different works — lots of them quick tales and essays — included within the “Delphi Full Works of Virginia Woolf.” It was additionally absent from the five volumes of “The Diary of Virginia Woolf,” as well as from all six volumes of “The Letters of Virginia Woolf.”
It’s potential that the quote appeared in an unpublished piece of Woolf’s writing, or {that a} up to date of Woolf’s recorded Woolf saying the quote throughout her lifetime. Because of this, we have rated the declare as unproven, which means we had been unable to demonstrably show that Woolf by no means stated the quote, regardless of an absence of any concrete proof that she did.
Nevertheless, there was motive to suspect that the quote was made up, probably with the assistance of AI software program — based on the AI detectors Quillbot, ZeroGPT and Merlin, the quote was seemingly AI-generated.
Snopes has reached out to the proprietor of the Philosophy Insights Fb web page, which appeared to have first shared the quote on-line, to ask concerning the quote’s origin. We are going to replace this story if and once we hear again.
A consultant of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, which maintains a web based list of quotes generally misattributed to Woolf, instructed us over electronic mail that the group was within the means of conducting its personal investigation into the quote, which had just lately come to its consideration. The consultant added: “Woolf is a kind of authors who is commonly credited with writing issues she did not!”
