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Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 9

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

Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than to merely keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world's view of us.

Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than to merely keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world's view of us.

Fashion, Views, Clothes

Virginia Woolf (1995). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.92, Wordsworth Editions

Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning.

Book, People, Giving

Georg Brand, Virginia Woolf, Koizumi Yakumo, Hernández Felisberto (2017). “ON READING: Le plaisir de lire”, p.34, Pieffe Edizioni via PublishDrive

It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only? Ought not education to bring out and fortify the differences rather than the similarities?

Sex, Men, Two

Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.114

What is a woman? I assure you, I do not know ... I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill.

Art, Believe, Skills

Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.142, Oxford University Press

I need silence, and to be alone and to go out, and to save one hour to consider what has happened to my world, what death has done to my world.

Silence, Needs, Done

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1377, Delphi Classics

Well, we must wait for the future to show.

Patience, Waiting, Shows

Virginia Woolf (2015). “To the Lighthouse”, p.98, Virginia Woolf

Madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does.

Writing, Doe, Finals

Virginia Woolf, Nigel Nicolson (1979). “The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1931”, Harcourt on Demand

A biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many as a thousand.

Self, Six, Literature

Orlando ch. 6 (1928)

Once she knows how to read there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in and that is herself.

Inspirational, Believe, Belief

Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2001). “The Mark on the Wall and Other Short Fiction”, p.53, Oxford University Press, USA

Illness is a part of every human being's experience. It enhances our perceptions and reduces self-consciousness. It is the great confessional; things are said, truths are blurted out which health conceals.

Self, Perception, Consciousness

Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.

Life, Writing, Attachment

Praise and blame alike mean nothing. No, delightful as the pastime of measuring may be, it is the most futile of all occupations, and to submit to the decrees of the measurers the most servile of attitudes.

Attitude, Mean, Occupation

Virginia Woolf (2015). “A Room of One's Own: And Three Guineas”, p.80, Oxford University Press, USA

Every season is likeable, and wet days and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and the most common actions──a walk, a talk, solitude in one’s own orchard──can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind. Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is only two finger’s-breadth from goodness.

Dream, Wine, Sleep

"The Common Reader". Book by Virginia Woolf, 1925.

Still, life had a way of adding day to day

Way, Still Life, Stills

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.96, Broadview Press

I want some one to sit beside after the day's pursuit and all its anguish, after its listening, its waitings, and its suspicions. After quarreling and reconciliation I need privacy--to be alone with you, to set this hubbub in order. For I am as neat as a cat in my habits.

Cat, Order, Waiting

The most extraordinary thing about writing is that when you've struck the right vein, tiredness goes. It must be an effort, thinking wrong.

Writing, Thinking, Effort

Virginia Woolf (1984). “The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1936-1941”, Harcourt

To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is...at last, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away.

Peace, Looks, Lasts

I detest the masculine point of view. I am bored by his heroism, virtue, and honour. I think the best these men can do is not talk about themselves anymore.

Men, Thinking, Views

Our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by.

Dark, Apparitions, Surface

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

What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.

Dark, Simple, Illumination

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.361, Wordsworth Editions

Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.

Wise, Men, Thinking

Virginia Woolf (2015). “A Room of One's Own: And Three Guineas”, p.23, Oxford University Press, USA

There'll be oceans of talk and emotions without end.

Ocean, Emotion, Ends

Virginia Woolf (1975). “The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1888-1912 (Virginia Stephen)”, Harcourt on Demand

No, I'm not clever. I've always cared more for people than for ideas.

Clever, Ideas, People

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

Come indoors then, and open the books on your library shelves. For you have a library and a good one. A working library, a living library; a library where nothing is chained down and nothing is locked up; a library where the songs of the singers rise naturally from the lives of the livers.

Song, Book, Library

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.828, Wordsworth Editions

We read Charlotte Bronte not for exquisite observation of character - her characters are vigorous and elementary; not for comedy - hers is grim and crude; not for a philosophic view of life - hers is that of a country parson's daughter; but for her poetry. Probably that is so with all writers who have, as she has, an overpowering personality, so that, as we say in real life, they have only to open the door to make themselves felt.

War, Character, Doors

"The Common Reader: First series".

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