Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 10

Quotes about:

• I mean it's the writing, not the being read, that excites me.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Joy

  "A Writer's Diary".

  14 Copy quote

• 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.

  Virginia Woolf

  Dark, Apparitions, Surface

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

  11 Copy quote

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

  Virginia Woolf

  Clever, Ideas, People

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

  10 Copy quote

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

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Thinking, Effort

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

  8 Copy quote

• war is a man's game ... the killing machine has a gender and it is male.

  Virginia Woolf

  War, Men, Games

  8 Copy quote

• I am volatile for one, rigid for another, angular as an icicle in silver, or voluptuous as a candle flame in gold.

  Virginia Woolf

  Flames, Gold, Icicles

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.742, Wordsworth Editions

  16 Copy quote

• 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.

  Virginia Woolf

  Dark, Simple, Illumination

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

  10 Copy quote

• They came to her, naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that; one wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions.

  Virginia Woolf

  Children, Growing Up, Long

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.277, Wordsworth Editions

  12 Copy quote

• Marvelous are the innocent.

  Virginia Woolf

  Innocent, Marvelous

  11 Copy quote

• So coming back from a journey, or after an illness, before habits had spun themselves across the surface, one felt that same unreality, which was so startling; felt something emerge. Life was most vivid then.

  Virginia Woolf

  Journey, Vivid, Illness

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.380, Wordsworth Editions

  14 Copy quote

• Am I too fast, too facile? I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am.

  Virginia Woolf

  Names, Sometimes, Grain

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.59, Virginia Woolf

  14 Copy quote

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

  Virginia Woolf

  Ocean, Emotion, Ends

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

  7 Copy quote

• The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life - the number of children, whether she had money of her own, if she had a room to herself, whether she had help bringing up her family, if she had servants, whether part of the housework was her task - it is only when we can measure the way of life and experience made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer.

  Virginia Woolf

  Children, Average, Numbers

  Virginia Woolf (1980). “Virginia Woolf, women and writing”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

  19 Copy quote

• Still, life had a way of adding day to day

  Virginia Woolf

  Way, Still Life, Stills

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

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  11 Copy quote

• When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Darkness, Existence

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.97, Virginia Woolf

  10 Copy quote

• Consolation for those moments when you can't tell whether you're the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world.

  Virginia Woolf

  Genius, World, Fool

  11 Copy quote

• I feel my brains, like a pear, to see if it's ripe; it will be exquisite by September.

  Virginia Woolf

  Brain, September, Pears

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

  32 Copy quote

• I went from one to the other holding my sorrow - no, not my sorrow but the incomprehensible nature of this our life - for their inspection. Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken - I to whom there is no beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all, yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, so unspeakably lonely.

  Virginia Woolf

  Lonely, Heart, Moon

  Virginia Woolf (1976). “The Waves”, Chatto & Windus

  21 Copy quote

• This self now as I leant over the gate looking down over fields rolling in waves of colour beneath me made no answer. He threw up no opposition. He attempted no phrase. His fist did not form. I waited. I listened. Nothing came, nothing. I cried then with a sudden conviction of complete desertion. Now there is nothing. No fin breaks the waste of this immeasurable sea. Life has destroyed me. No echo comes when I speak, no varied words. This is more truly death than the death of friends, than the death of youth.

  Virginia Woolf

  Echoes, Self, Sea

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1446, Delphi Classics

  15 Copy quote

• To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have- to want and want- how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again!

  Virginia Woolf

  Heart, Body, Want

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “To the Lighthouse”, p.175, Virginia Woolf

  17 Copy quote

• Each had his own business to think of. Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.

  Virginia Woolf

  Friendship, Women, Book

  "Selected Works of Virginia Woolf".

  17 Copy quote

• Nothing could be slow enough, nothing lasts too long. No pleasure could equal, she thought, straightening the chairs, pushing in one book on the shelf, this having done with the triumphs of youth, lost herself in the process of living, to find it with a shock of delight, as the sun rose, as the day sank. Many a time had she gone, at Barton when they were all talking, to look at the sky; seen it between peoples shoulders at dinner; seen it in London when she could not sleep. She walked to the window.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Sleep, Talking

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.193, Broadview Press

  16 Copy quote

• Sometimes I think heaven must be one continuous unexhausted reading.

  Virginia Woolf

  Reading, Thinking, Heaven

  Virginia Woolf (1975). “The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1932-1935”

  11 Copy quote

• I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual

  Virginia Woolf

  Optimistic, Writing, Usual

  Virginia Woolf (1978). “The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol.2, 1920-1924”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

  7 Copy quote

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