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Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 19

All Quotes Adventure Age Aging Art Beach Beauty Belief Bitterness Blame Bones Chaos Character Charity Children Communication Consciousness Country Creativity Criticism Darkness Death Desire Difficulty Diversity Doubt Duty Dying Earth Effort Essays Feelings Feminism Fighting Flying Freedom Friendship Funny Genius Giving Goodness Growing Up Happiness Hate Hatred Healing Heart Heaven History Home Honesty House Human Nature Hurt Illness Imagination Independence Inspiration Inspirational Intimacy Joy Judging Language Life Literature Love Lust Lying Madness Memories Moon Morning Motivational Nature Pain Passion Past Peace Perception Personality Philosophy Pleasure Praise Quality Reading Reality Reflection Running Sadness Safety Silence Silver Singing Skins Sleep Solitude Soul Spring Stress Style Suffering Tea Time Today Tragedy Travel Truth Vision Waiting Wall War Water Weed Wine Winter Writing

The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think.

The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think.

Dark, Thinking, Best Things

Virginia Woolf, Anne Olivier Bell (1977). “The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1915-1919”, Chatto & Windus

I [who] am perpetually making notes in the margin of my mind for some final statement.

Mind, Finals, Notes

Virginia Woolf (2005). “The Waves”, p.161, Collector's Library

There is no doubt in my mind, that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice.

Voice, Doubt, Mind

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4325, Delphi Classics

For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately.

Book, Judging, Habit

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.612, Wordsworth Editions

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

Courage, Mean, Thinking

Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.59, Lulu Press, Inc

They went in and out of each other's minds without any effort.

Effort, Mind

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.168, Wordsworth Editions

for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge

Men, Unity, Tablets

Virginia Woolf (2006). “To the Lighthouse”, p.92, OUP Oxford

The roar of the traffic, the passage of undifferentiated faces, this way and that way, drugs me into dreams; rubs the features from faces. People might walk through me. And what is this moment of time, this particular day in which I have found myself caught? The growl of traffic might be any uproar - forest trees or the roar of wild beasts. Time has whizzed back an inch or two on its reel; our short progress has been cancelled. I think also that our bodies are in truth naked. We are only lightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these pavements are shells, bones and silence.

Dream, Thinking, Two

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.691, Wordsworth Editions

The weight of the world is on our shoulders, its vision is through our eyes; if we blink or look aside, or turn back to finger what Plato said or remember Napoleon and his conquests, we inflict on the world the injury of some obliquity. This is life.

Plato, Eye, Vision

Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.123, Virginia Woolf

For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone.

Thinking, Solitude, Needs

Virginia Woolf (2016). “To the Lighthouse”, p.58, Tyché

It is useless to read Greek in translation; translators can but offer us a vague equivalent.

Greek, Useless, Language

Virginia Woolf, Hermione Lee (2000). “A room of one's own and other essays”

Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.

Luck, World, May

Virginia Woolf (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.311, OUP Oxford

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.

Writing, Sacrifice, Hair

Virginia Woolf, Hermione Lee (2000). “A room of one's own and other essays”

Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.

Nature, Tears, Together

Virginia Woolf, Michael H. Whitworth (2014). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.13, Oxford University Press, USA

Only longing can fill with more of itself.

Chaos, Longing

That great Cathedral space which was childhood.

Time, Space, Childhood

Virginia Woolf, Jeanne Schulkind (1976). “Moments of being: unpublished autobiographical writings”, Sussex University Press

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.

Writing, Long, Wish

Virginia Woolf (2005). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.628, Wordsworth Editions

Does Nature supplement what man advanced? Or does she complete what he began?

Men, Doe, Supplements

We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print.

Writing, Sight, Personality

The Common Reader (1925) "The Modern Essay"

Tell me", he wanted to say, "everything in the whole world" - for he had the wildest, most absurd, extravagant ideas about poets and poetry - but how to speak to a man who does not see you? who sees ogres, satyrs, perhaps the depth of the sea instead?

Men, Sea, Ideas

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1145, Delphi Classics

Theories then are dangerous things.

Theory, Dangerous, Dangerous Things

Virginia Woolf (1967). “Collected essays”

... pure honesty is a doubtful quality; it means often lack of imagination.

Honesty, Mean, Imagination

Virginia Woolf (1978). “The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1920-1924”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us, and not we, them.

Views, Clothes, Support

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.63, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.

World, Might, Mrs Dalloway

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.184, Wordsworth Editions

For it is a curious fact that though human beings have such imperfect means of communication, that they can only say 'good to eat' when they mean 'beautiful' and the other way about, they will yet endure ridicule and misunderstanding rather than keep any experience to themselves.

Beautiful, Communication, Mean

Virginia Woolf (2014). “Orlando”, p.122, OUP Oxford

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