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Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 20

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She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.

She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.

Happiness, Taxi Cabs, Sea

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.132, Wordsworth Editions

And now more than anything I want beautiful prose. I relish it more and more exquisitely.

Beautiful, Want, Prose

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4321, Delphi Classics

... the transaction between a writer and the spirit of the age is one of infinite delicacy, and upon a nice arrangement between the two the whole fortune of his works depend.

Nice, Two, Age

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.264, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There is a coherence in things, a stability; something... is immune from change and shines out... in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby.

Shining, Rubies, Fleeting

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.322, Wordsworth Editions

Moments like this are buds on the tree of life. Flowers of darkness they are.

Flower, Tree, Darkness

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.68, Broadview Press

One should aim, seriously, at disregarding ups and downs; a compliment here, silence there ... the central fact remains stable, which is the fact of my own pleasure in the art.

Art, Silence, Facts

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4298, Delphi Classics

A thousand things to be written had I time: had I power. A very little writing uses up my capacity for writing.

Writing, Use, Littles

Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.123, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Ransack the language as he might, words failed him. He wanted another landscape, and another tongue.

Landscape, Might, Tongue

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.422, Wordsworth Editions

One could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then one gave it up; then the idea sunk back again; then one became like most middle-aged people, cautious, furtive, with wrinkles between the eyes and a look of perpetual apprehension. For how could one express in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there?

Eye, Wrinkles, Ideas

To whom can I expose the urgency of my own passion?…There is nobody—here among these grey arches, and moaning pigeons, and cheerful games and tradition and emulation, all so skilfully organised to prevent feeling alone.

Passion, Games, Feeling Alone

Virginia Woolf (2005). “The Waves”, p.43, Collector's Library

To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.

Morning, Home, Writing

Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.20, Oxford University Press

Half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew for no one was ever for a second taken in.

Taken, Thinking, People

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.10, Broadview Press

to write a novel in the heart of London is next to an impossibility. I feel as if I were nailing a flag to the top of a mast in a raging gale.

Writing, Heart, Flags

Virginia Woolf, Joanne Trautmann Banks (1977). “A change of perspective”, Vintage

Why does one write these books after all? The drudgery, the misery, the grind, are forgotten everytime; and one launches another, and it seems sheer joy and buoyancy.

Book, Writing, Joy

Virginia Woolf, Joanne Trautmann Banks (1975). “The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1923-1928”, Harcourt on Demand

It is impossible for human beings, constituted as they are, both to fight and to have ideals.

Fighting, Impossible, Humans

Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Voyage Out”, p.74, Virginia Woolf

...solitary like a pool at evening, far distant, seen from a train window, vanishing so quickly that the pool, pale in the evening, is scarcely robbed of its solitude, though once seen. *** Here sitting on the world, she thought, for she could not shake herself free from the sense that everything this morning was happening for the first time, perhaps for the last time, as a traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out of the train window, that he must look now, for he will never see that town, or that mule-cart, or that woman at work in the fields, again.

Morning, Solitude, Looks

To sit and contemplate - to remember the faces of women without desire, to be pleased by the great deeds of men without envy, to be everything and everywhere in sympathy and yet content to remain where and what you are.

Men, Envy, Desire

Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.16, Oxford University Press

He called her a melon, a pineapple, an olive tree, an emerald, and a fox in the snow all in the space of three seconds; he did not know whether he had heard her, tasted her, seen her, or all three together.

Space, Snow, Tree

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.96, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

To read a novel is a difficult and complex art.

Art, Reading, Difficult

Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.375, Lulu Press, Inc

The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has a romance of its own.

Romantic, Cutting, Romance

Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.187, Lulu Press, Inc

Doesn't one always think of the past, in a garden with men and women lying under the trees? Aren't they one's past, all that remains of it, those men and women, those ghosts lying under the trees ... one's happiness, one's reality?

Lying, Past, Reality

Virginia Woolf (2015). “Monday or Tuesday”, p.47, Virginia Woolf

I like books whose virtue is all drawn together in a page or two. I like sentences that don't budge though armies cross them.

Book, Army, Two

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.99, Wordsworth Editions

But the novels of women were not affected only by the necessarily narrow range of the writer's experience. They showed, at least in the nineteenth century, another characteristic which may be traced to the writer's sex. In Middlemarch and in Jane Eyre we are conscious not merely of the writer's character, as we are conscious of the character of Charles Dickens, but we are conscious of a woman's presence of someone resenting the treatment of her sex and pleading for its rights.

Sex, Character, Rights

Virginia Woolf (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.245, OUP Oxford

He was a thorough good sort; a bit limited; a bit thick in the head; yes; but a thorough good sort. Whatever he took up he did in the same matter-of-fact sensible way; without a touch of imagination, without a sparkle of brilliancy, but with the inexplicable niceness of his type.

Imagination, Matter, Way

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.176, Wordsworth Editions

To evade such temptations is the first duty of the poet. For as the ear is the antechamber to the soul, poetry can adulterate and destroy more surely then lust or gunpowder. The poet's, then, is the highest office of all. His words reach where others fall short. A silly song of Shakespeare's has done more for the poor and the wicked than all the preachers and philanthropists in the world.

Song, Silly, Fall

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1221, Delphi Classics

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