Virginia Woolf Quotes About Authority

Quotes about: Authority

• To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries.

  Virginia Woolf

  Library, Sanctuary, Spirit

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2597, Delphi Classics

• A learned man is a sedentary, concentrated solitary enthusiast, who searches through books to discover some particular grain of truth upon which he has set his heart. If the passion for reading conquers him, his gains dwindle and vanish between his fingers. A reader, on the other hand, must check the desire for learning at the outset; if knowledge sticks to him well and good, but to go in pursuit of it, to read on a system, to become a specialist or an authority, is very apt to kill what suits us to consider the more humane passion for pure and disinterested reading.

  Virginia Woolf

  Reading, Book, Passion

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

• But it is just when opinions universally prevail and we have added lip service to their authority that we become sometimes most keenly conscious that we do not believe a word that we are saying.

  Virginia Woolf

  Believe, Lips, Opinion

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

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin