Virginia Woolf — Quote from Monday or Tuesday
“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.”
Monday or Tuesday (1921)
Concepts: conformity, loneliness, oppression
Resonant Quotes
- “Hell is other people.” — Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit Woolf's eyes of others as prisons and Sartre's hell as other people are twin formulations of the same existential tra...
- “The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identic...” — Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom Both reveal how external social forces imprison authentic selfhood—Fromm through conformist automatization and Woolf ...
- “To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture. The Antillean who wants...” — Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks Both explore how external social forces—the gaze and language—become internalized mechanisms of control and identity ...
- “The oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the...” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex Both authors reveal how oppression operates through internalized social control, with Woolf's metaphor of external ju...
- “Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.” — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man Both reveal how apparent freedom masks deeper forms of control—Woolf through social perception and Marcuse through sy...
- “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” — George Orwell, Animal Farm Both expose how social systems create false hierarchies that imprison consciousness, with Woolf examining psychologic...
- “Loneliness is such an omnipotent and painful threat to many persons that they...” — Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself The quotes form a dialectical tension where Woolf identifies others' judgment as imprisonment while May suggests fear...