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Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 23

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

When the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning, it satisfies the senses amazingly.

When the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning, it satisfies the senses amazingly.

Philosophy, Medicine, Skins

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1291, Delphi Classics

There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'.

Stars, Night, Clouds

Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.46, Virginia Woolf

The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mould of the body and mind entire.

Essence, Giving, Mind

"The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1918-1924".

One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

Strong Women, Adversity, People

Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing.

Eye, Green, Green Leaves

Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.6, Virginia Woolf

She thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.

Atheist, Sake, Blame

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.107, Broadview Press

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

Book, Reading, Form

The Captain's Death Bed, 'Reading' (published 1950).

Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts.

Writing, Aunt, Greatness

Virginia Woolf, Andrew McNeillie (1986). “The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1925-1928”, Chatto & Windus

She felt... how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach.

Beach, Littles, Chaos

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.286, Wordsworth Editions

It was a silly, silly dream, being unhappy.

Dream, Silly, Unhappy

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.83, Broadview Press

Would there be trees if we didn't see them?

Tree, Ifs

Virginia Woolf (2002). “The Years”, p.144, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats - and one always secretes too much jelly.

People, Jelly, Too Much

Letter to Margaret Llewelyn Davies, 4 July 1938

The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.

Flames, Literature, World

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.859, Delphi Classics

old emotions like old families have intermarried and have many connections.

Connections, Emotion

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.3206, Delphi Classics

A writer should give direct certainty; explanations are so much water poured into the wine.

Wine, Giving, Water

Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.89, Lulu Press, Inc

Yes, yes, I'm coming. Right up the top of the house. One moment I'll linger. How the mud goes round in the mind-what a swirl these monsters leave, the waters rocking, the weeds waving and green here, black there, striking to the sand, till by degrees the atoms reassemble, the deposit sifts itself, and a gain through the eyes one sees clear and still, and there comes to the lips some prayer for the departed, some obsequy for the souls of those one nods to, the one never meets again.

Weed, Prayer, Eye

Virginia Woolf (2014). “Monday or Tuesday: Eight Stories”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now that in the time of the Pharaohs?

Men, Average, Civilization

Virginia Woolf (2015). “To the Lighthouse”, p.33, Virginia Woolf

I feel that I have had a blow; but it is not, as I thought as a child, simply a blow from an enemy hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life; it is or will become a revelation of some order; it is a token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together.

Hurt, Pain, Children

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

We are cut, we are fallen. We are become part of that unfeeling universe that sleeps when we are at our quickest and burns red when we lie asleep.

Lying, Sleep, Cutting

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1444, Delphi Classics

I will achieve in my life - Heaven grant that it be not long - some gigantic amalgamation between the two discrepancies so hideously apparent to me. Out of my suffering I will do it. I will knock. I will enter.

Two, Long, Heaven

Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.37, Virginia Woolf

What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with this extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was.

Excitement, Mrs Dalloway, Said

Virginia Woolf (1996). “Mrs Dalloway”, p.141, Wordsworth Editions

You have been in every way all that anyone could be.... If anybody could have saved me it would have been you.

Way, Suicide Note, Saved

Virginia Woolf (2012). “The Voyage Out”, p.5, Courier Corporation

So I have to create the whole thing afresh for myself each time. Probably all writers now are in the same boat. It is the penalty we pay for breaking with tradition, and the solitude makes the writing more exciting though the being read less so. One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with ones words.

Writing, Sea, Solitude

Virginia Woolf (1981). “Mrs. Dalloway”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

When the body escaped mutilation, seldom did the heart go to the grave unscarred.

Heart, Body, Graves

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.772, Delphi Classics

In illness words seem to possess a mystic quality.

Quality, Illness, Mystic

Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.108, Oxford University Press

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