Claim:

English writer Virginia Woolf said: “There is a kind of sadness that comes from knowing too much, from seeing the world as it really is. It is the sadness of realizing that life is not one great adventure, but a series of small, inconsequential adventures. Your love is not a fairy tale, but a fragile, fleeting feeling.” “And in this understanding there is a deep sense of detachment from the world, from other people, from oneself.”

Evaluation:

In August and September 2024, a quote about sadness and loneliness appeared in a series of popular social media posts attributed to British author Virginia Woolf, known for her numerous novels, short stories, and essays, including “Mrs. Dalloway” and “A Room of One’s.” To have.”

Quote as it appears in posts in x (archived), Facebook (archived) And instagram (archived), To read:

There is a kind of sadness that comes from knowing too much, from seeing the world as it really is. The sadness of realizing that life is not a great adventure but a series of small, insignificant moments, that love is not a fairy tale but a fragile, temporary feeling, that happiness is not a permanent state but a rare state. A glimpse of something we can never hold on to. And in this understanding there is a deep loneliness, a feeling of detachment from the world, from other people, from oneself.

At the time of writing this article, a Facebook to post (archived(which included the quote) received nearly 16,000 reactions and 900 comments; some of these took the claim of attribution to the quote at face value.

(Facebook)

For example, one commentator said, wrote (archived): “The poetic prose of such an extraordinary genius of this writer speaks clearly to me decades after his passing.” another one wrote (archived): “The truth of the above quote should inspire some thinking.”

However, there was no concrete evidence to support claims that Woolf said or wrote these words.

The earliest securely datable post containing the quote appeared to be dated August 26, 2024. to post (archived) From Facebook page Philosophical Conceptions. This post included a line in which the quote was attributed to Woolf’s 1927 novel “To the Lighthouse.” — a detail omitted in many later posts about the quote.

However, this quote did not appear anywhere in “To the Lighthouse.” A search for the term “sadness” in the version of the book hosted by the digital library HathiTrust to create The word had two appearances; None of these were similar to the quote in question.

Quote also did not appear in any of hundreds of other works, mostly short stories and essays including In “The Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf.” At the same time unavailable from the five units about “Virginia Woolf’s Diary,” like Alright like from All six units about “Letters of Virginia Woolf”

It is possible that the quote appears in an unpublished fragment of Woolf’s writings, or that a contemporary of Woolf’s recorded her saying the quote during her lifetime. Therefore, we considered the claim unsubstantiated; This means that we cannot prove that Woolf never said this quote, even though there is no concrete evidence that she did.

But there was reason to suspect that this quote had been made up, possibly with someone’s help. artificial intelligence software — based on artificial intelligence detectors quillbot, ZeroGPT And MyrtleThe quote was probably created by artificial intelligence.

Snopes reached out to the owner of the Philosophy Insights Facebook page, who appeared to have first shared the quote online, to ask about the source of the quote. We’ll update this story when we get feedback.

a representative Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britainproviding an online service list Many of the quotes often misattributed to Woolf informed us via email that the organization was in the process of conducting its own investigation into the recently raised quote. his attention. The rep added: “Woolf is one of those writers who is often credited with writing things she hasn’t done!”