Virginia Woolf Quotes About Water

Quotes about: Water

• I see nothing. We may sink and settle on the waves. The sea will drum in my ears. The white petals will be darkened with sea water. They will float for a moment and then sink. Rolling over the waves will shoulder me under. Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me.

  Virginia Woolf

  Fall, Sea, White

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.152, Virginia Woolf

• The waves broke and spread their waters swiftly over the shore. One after another they massed themselves and fell; the spray tossed itself back with the energy of their fall. The waves were steeped deep-blue save for a pattern of diamond-pointed light on their backs which rippled as the backs of great horses ripple with muscles as they move. The waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great beast stamping.

  Virginia Woolf

  Horse, Moving, Fall

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.109, Virginia Woolf

• To enjoy freedom ... we have of course to control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly, squirting half the house in order to water a single rose.

  Virginia Woolf

  Freedom, Rain, Order

  Virginia Woolf, Hermione Lee (2000). “A room of one's own and other essays”

• The large shiny black forehead of the first whale was no more than two yards from us when it sank beneath the surface of the water, then we saw the huge blue-black bulk glide quietly under the raft right beneath our feet. It lay there for some time, dark and motionless, and we held our breath as we looked down on the gigantic curved back of a mammal a good deal longer than the raft.

  Virginia Woolf

  Time, Dark, Blue

• He looked very old. He looked, James thought, getting his head now against the Lighthouse, now against the waste of waters running away into the open, like some old stone lying on the sand; he looked as if he had become physically what was always at the back of both of their minds-that loneliness which was for both of them the truth about things.

  Virginia Woolf

  Running, Loneliness, Lying

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.387, Wordsworth Editions

• 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.

  Virginia Woolf

  Weed, Prayer, Eye

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

• About here, she thought, dabbling her fingers in the water, a ship had sunk, and she muttered, dreamily half asleep, how we perished, each alone.

  Virginia Woolf

  Water, Half, Ships

• To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other people's feelings, to rend the thin veils of civilisation so wantonly, so brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without replying, dazed and blinded, she bend her head as if to let her pelt f jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked.

  Virginia Woolf

  Dirty, Thinking, People

• Outside the trees dragged their leaves like nets through the depths of the air; the sound of water was in the room and through the waves came the voices of birds singing.

  Virginia Woolf

  Air, Voice, Water

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.216, Wordsworth Editions

• She fell into a deep pool of sticky water, which eventually closed over her head. She saw nothing and heard nothing but a faint booming sound, which was the sound of the sea rolling over her head. While all her tormentors thought that she was dead, she was not dead, but curled up at the bottom of the sea.

  Virginia Woolf

  Sea, Water, Sound

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.299, Delphi Classics

• I ride rough waters, and shall sink with no one to save me.

  Virginia Woolf

  Water, Save Me, Rough

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.94, ShandonPress

• The depths of the sea are only water after all.

  Virginia Woolf

  Sea, Water, Depth

• You cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water-it is adulterated, methylated, sanded poetry that makes the best lectures.

  Virginia Woolf

  Water, Ingredients, Lectures

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.361, Lulu Press, Inc

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

  Virginia Woolf

  Wine, Giving, Water

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

• There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay.... the essay must be pure--pure like water or pure like wine, but pure from dullness, deadness, and deposits of extraneous matter.

  Virginia Woolf

  Wine, Water, Literature

  Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.14, Oxford University Press

• No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party - for what do they battle except their own prestige? It is not love of truth but desire to prevail that sets quarter against quarter and makes subserviency rather than the triumph of truth and the exaltation of virtue - but these moralities belong, and should be left to the historian, since they are as dull as ditch water.

  Virginia Woolf

  Party, Believe, Passion

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.178, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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