Authors:

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 31

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 I am grown up I shall carry a notebook—a fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I shall enter my phrases.

When I am grown up I shall carry a notebook—a fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I shall enter my phrases.

Notebook, Phrases, Pages

Virginia Woolf (2005). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.654, Wordsworth Editions

In fact, though their acquaintance had been so short, they had guessed, as always happens between lovers, everything of any importance about each other in two seconds at the utmost, and it now remained only to fill in such unimportant details as what they were called; where they lived; and whether they were beggars or people of substance.

Two, People, Details

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1260, Delphi Classics

Suppose the looking glass smashes, the image disappears, and the romantic figure with the green of forest depths all about it is there no longer, but only that shell of a person which is seen by other people - what an airless, shallow, bald, prominent world it becomes! A world not to be lived in. As we face each other in omnibuses and underground railways we are looking into the mirror that accounts for the vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, in our eyes.

Eye, Glasses, Mirrors

Virginia Woolf (2017). “A arte da brevidade: Contos”, p.7, Autêntica

Love ought to stop on both sides, don’t you think, simultaneously?’ He spoke without any stress on the words, so as not to wake the sleepers. ‘But it won’t - that’s the devil,’ he added in the same undertone.

Stress, Thinking, Devil

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1697, Delphi Classics

There is something about the present which we would not exchange, though we were offered a choice of all past ages to live in.

Past, Choices, Age

Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.27, Oxford University Press

But Time, unfortunately, though it makes animals and vegetables bloom and fade with amazing punctuality has no such simple effect upon the mind of man.

Animal, Simple, Men

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.140, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

How far we are going to read a poet when we can read about a poet is a problem to lay before biographers.

Problem, Poet, Lays

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4047, Delphi Classics

Needless to say, the business of living interferes with the solitude so needed for any work of the imagination. Here's what Virginia Woolf said in her diary about the sticky issue: "I've shirked two parties, and another Frenchman, and buying a hat, and tea with Hilda Trevelyan, for I really can't combine all this with keeping all my imaginary people going.

Party, Virginia, Two

For the eye has this strange property: it rests only on beauty.

Eye, Strange, Property

Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.179, Oxford University Press

She was like a crinkled poppy; with the desire to drink dry dust.

Dust, Desire, Dry

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.757, Wordsworth Editions

Like most uneducated Englishwomen, I like reading--I like reading books in the bulk.

Book, Reading, Reading Books

Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.142

The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it.

Ocean, Wrinkles, Sea

Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.3, Virginia Woolf

I believe that the main thing in beginning a novel is to feel, not that you can write it, but that it exists on the far side of a gulf, which words can't cross: that it's to be pulled through only in a breathless anguish.

Believe, Writing, Sides

Virginia Woolf, Joanne Trautmann Banks (1977). “A Change of Perspective”, Chatto & Windus

Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it.

Running, Tombstone, Cutting

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2645, Delphi Classics

At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial-and any question about sex is that-one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold.

Sex, Doe, Opinion

Virginia Woolf (2015). “A Room of One's Own (Annotated)”, p.4, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontes and George Eliot could no more have written than Shakespeare could have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and tamed the natural savagery of the tongue. For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

Thinking, Years, Voice

Virginia Woolf (1989). “A Room of One's Own”, p.79, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Walden - all his books, indeed - are packed with subtle, conflicting, and very fruitful discoveries. They are not written to prove something in the end. They are written as the Indians turn down twigs to mark their path through the forest. He cuts his way through life as if no one had ever taken that road before, leaving these signs for those who come after, should they care to see which way he went.

Book, Taken, Cutting

Virginia Woolf, Andrew McNeillie (1986). “The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1912-1918”, Harcourt

letters are venerable; and the telephone valiant, for the journey is a lonely one, and if bound together by notes and telephones we went in company, perhaps - who knows? - we might talk by the way.

Lonely, Communication, Journey

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.68, Wordsworth Editions

All artists need a room of their own

Artist, Needs, Rooms

A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

Writing, Mind, Excellence

There was no treachery too base for the world to commit.

World, Treachery, Commit

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.297, Wordsworth Editions

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

People, Body, Crowds

Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.49

For it is probable that when people talk aloud, the selves (of which there may be more than two thousand) are conscious of disserverment, and are trying to communicate but when communication is established there is nothing more to be said.

Communication, Self, Two

But the close withdrew: the hand softened. It was over-- the moment.

Hands, Moments

As a creator of character his peculiarity is that he creates wherever his eyes rest ... With such a power at his command Dickens made his books blaze up, not by tightening the plot or sharpening the wit, but by throwing another handful of people upon the fire.

Book, Character, Eye

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.3106, Delphi Classics

You May Also Like: