Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 13

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• If people are highly successful in their profession they lose their senses. Sight goes. They have no time to look at pictures. Sound goes. They have no time to listen to music. Speech goes. They have no time for conversation. They lose their sense of proportion.

  Virginia Woolf

  Success, Sight, People

  Virginia Woolf (2005). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.835, Wordsworth Editions

  8 Copy quote

• Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body.

  Virginia Woolf

  Fall, Doors, Feet

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.30, Virginia Woolf

  9 Copy quote

• I remember I would not stand still; I would not stop being perplexed by everything that spontaneously attracted me or caught my attention. I would never cease to look around me and observe myself in relation to nature: either crystal clear skies and sun-melting afternoons, or foggy winter days and weirdly tinted nights. I would never cease to dream and stand by the window, ready to let the diversity of life pass freely through my skin; courageous enough to believe I stood a chance in devouring each shade of sensation. Or perhaps, immensely foolish to plainly - believe at all.

  Virginia Woolf

  Dream, Believe, Winter

  4 Copy quote

• Let us not take for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.

  Virginia Woolf

  Granted, Bigs

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.122, Lulu Press, Inc

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words.

  Virginia Woolf

  Simple, Style, Use

  Virginia Woolf (1975). “The letters of Virginia Woolf”

  7 Copy quote

• The real novelist, the perfectly simple human being, could go on, indefinitely imaging.

  Virginia Woolf

  Real, Simple, Novelists

  9 Copy quote

• There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea.

  Virginia Woolf

  Country, Intelligent, Men

  Virginia Woolf (1942). “The death of the moth: and other essays”

  10 Copy quote

• Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall.

  Virginia Woolf

  Fall, Order, Mind

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.122, Lulu Press, Inc

  5 Copy quote

• I enjoy almost everything. Yet I have some restless searcher in me. Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay hands on and say “This is it”? My depression is a harassed feeling. I’m looking: but that’s not it — that’s not it. What is it? And shall I die before I find it?

  Virginia Woolf

  Discovery, Hands, Feelings

  Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.97, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  8 Copy quote

• We all indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it comes to saying, even to someone opposite, what we think, then how little we are able to convey! The phantom is through the mind and out of the window before we can lay salt on

  Virginia Woolf

  Thinking, Opposites, Indulge In

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2279, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that.

  Virginia Woolf

  Children, Animal, Vanity

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.185, Wordsworth Editions

  6 Copy quote

• if newspapers were written by people whose sole object in writing was to tell the truth about politics and the truth about art we should not believe in war, and we should believe in art.

  Virginia Woolf

  Art, War, Believe

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.853, Wordsworth Editions

  7 Copy quote

• I worship you, but I loathe marriage. I hate its smugness, its safety, its compromise and the thought of you interfering with my work, hindering me; what would you answer?

  Virginia Woolf

  Hate, Worship You, Safety

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.218, Delphi Classics

  11 Copy quote

• It seems as if an age of genius must be succeeded by an age of endeavour; riot and extravagance by cleanliness and hard work.

  Virginia Woolf

  Birthday, Hard Work, Age

  Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.26, Oxford University Press

  31 Copy quote

• I spent an hour looking at pots and carpets in the museums the other day, until the desire to describe them became like the desire for the lusts of the flesh.

  Virginia Woolf

  Museums, Lust, Desire

  Virginia Woolf (1976). “The Letters of Virginia Woolf”

  7 Copy quote

• Other people have faces; Susan and Jinny have faces; they are here. Their world is the real world. The things they lift are heavy. They say Yes, they say No; whereas I shift and change and am seen through in a second. If they meet a housemaid she looks at them without laughing. But she laughs at me. They know what to say if spoken to. They laugh really; they get angry really; while I have to look first and do what other people do when they have done it.

  Virginia Woolf

  Real, People, Laughing

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Collected Novels of Virginia Woolf - Volume I - The Years, The Waves”, p.26, Read Books Ltd

  14 Copy quote

• It is equally vain,” she thought, “for you to think you can protect me, or for me to think I can worship you. The light of truth beats upon us without shadow, and the light of truth is damnably unbecoming to us both.

  Virginia Woolf

  Thinking, Light, Worship You

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.498, Wordsworth Editions

  6 Copy quote

• At last she shut the book sharply, lay back, and drew a deep breath, expressive of the wonder which always marks the transition from the imaginary world to the real world.

  Virginia Woolf

  Real, Book, Transition

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.114, Delphi Classics

  11 Copy quote

• Romantic Love is only an Illusion. A story one makes up in One's Mind about Another Person.

  Virginia Woolf

  Romantic Love, Love Is, Mind

  7 Copy quote

• The interest in life does not lie in what people do, nor even in their relations to each other, but largely in the power to communicate with a third party, antagonistic, enigmatic, yet perhaps persuadable, which one may call life in general.

  Virginia Woolf

  Life, Lying, Party

  1925 The Common Reader, 'On Not Knowing Greek'.

  65 Copy quote

• There is no stability in this world. Who is to say what meaning there is in anything? Who is to foretell the flight of a word? It is a balloon that sails over tree-tops. To speak of knowledge is futile. All is experiment and adventure. We are forever mixing ourselves with unknown quantities. What is to come? I know not. But, as I put down my glass I remember; I am engaged to be married. I am to dine with my friends tonight. I am Bernard.

  Virginia Woolf

  Adventure, Glasses, Tree

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.693, Wordsworth Editions

  12 Copy quote

• What I like, or one of the things I like, about motoring is the sense it gives one of lighting accidentally, like a voyager who touches another planet with the tip of his toe, upon scenes which would have gone on, have always gone on, will go on, unrecorded, save for this chance glimpse. Then it seems to me I am allowed to see the heart of the world uncovered for a moment.

  Virginia Woolf

  Heart, Giving, Glimpse

  Virginia Woolf (1980). “The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1925-1930”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

  8 Copy quote

• At one and the same time, therefore, society is everything and society is nothing. Society is the most powerful concoction in the world and society has no existence whatsoever

  Virginia Woolf

  Powerful, World, Most Powerful

  Virginia Woolf (1995). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.95, Wordsworth Editions

  5 Copy quote

• Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched—love for instance—we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next.

  Virginia Woolf

  Stories, Substance, Goes On

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1428, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

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