"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."
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Chapter 4
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Orlando%3A_A_Biography
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Orlando: A Biography
Orlando: A Biography (1928) is a novel by Virginia Woolf, which she called "a biography", intending it to be the first of a new genre breaking barriers between fiction and non-fiction. It was inspired by the life and behavior of her friend Vita Sackville-West.
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