Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 19

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• This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

  Virginia Woolf

  Courage, Mean, Thinking

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.59, Lulu Press, Inc

  10 Copy quote

• They went in and out of each other's minds without any effort.

  Virginia Woolf

  Effort, Mind

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.168, Wordsworth Editions

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• For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Judging, Habit

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.612, Wordsworth Editions

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• for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge

  Virginia Woolf

  Men, Unity, Tablets

  Virginia Woolf (2006). “To the Lighthouse”, p.92, OUP Oxford

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• Lines slip easily down the accustomed grooves. The old designs are copied so glibly that we are half inclined to think them original, save for that very glibness.

  Virginia Woolf

  Thinking, Design, Half

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.3037, Delphi Classics

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• I need a little language such as lovers use, words of one syllable such as children speak when they come into the room and find their mother sewing and pick up some scrap of bright wool, a feather, or a shred of chintz. I need a howl; a cry. When the storm crosses the marsh and sweeps over me where I lie in the ditch unregarded I need no words. Nothing neat. Nothing that comes down with all its feet on the floor. None of those resonances and lovely echoes that break and chime from nerve to nerve in our breasts making wild music, false phrases. I have done with phrases.

  Virginia Woolf

  Mother, Children, Lying

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1452, Delphi Classics

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• There is no doubt in my mind, that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice.

  Virginia Woolf

  Voice, Doubt, Mind

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4325, Delphi Classics

  7 Copy quote

• I [who] am perpetually making notes in the margin of my mind for some final statement.

  Virginia Woolf

  Mind, Finals, Notes

  Virginia Woolf (2005). “The Waves”, p.161, Collector's Library

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• The weight of the world is on our shoulders, its vision is through our eyes; if we blink or look aside, or turn back to finger what Plato said or remember Napoleon and his conquests, we inflict on the world the injury of some obliquity. This is life.

  Virginia Woolf

  Plato, Eye, Vision

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.123, Virginia Woolf

  12 Copy quote

• The roar of the traffic, the passage of undifferentiated faces, this way and that way, drugs me into dreams; rubs the features from faces. People might walk through me. And what is this moment of time, this particular day in which I have found myself caught? The growl of traffic might be any uproar - forest trees or the roar of wild beasts. Time has whizzed back an inch or two on its reel; our short progress has been cancelled. I think also that our bodies are in truth naked. We are only lightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these pavements are shells, bones and silence.

  Virginia Woolf

  Dream, Thinking, Two

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.691, Wordsworth Editions

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• For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone.

  Virginia Woolf

  Thinking, Solitude, Needs

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

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• Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.

  Virginia Woolf

  Luck, World, May

  Virginia Woolf (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.311, OUP Oxford

  7 Copy quote

• So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Sacrifice, Hair

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

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• Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.

  Virginia Woolf

  Nature, Tears, Together

  Virginia Woolf, Michael H. Whitworth (2014). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.13, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Only longing can fill with more of itself.

  Virginia Woolf

  Chaos, Longing

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• Tell me", he wanted to say, "everything in the whole world" - for he had the wildest, most absurd, extravagant ideas about poets and poetry - but how to speak to a man who does not see you? who sees ogres, satyrs, perhaps the depth of the sea instead?

  Virginia Woolf

  Men, Sea, Ideas

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1145, Delphi Classics

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• Theories then are dangerous things.

  Virginia Woolf

  Theory, Dangerous, Dangerous Things

  Virginia Woolf (1967). “Collected essays”

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• So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Long, Wish

  Virginia Woolf (2005). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.628, Wordsworth Editions

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• That great Cathedral space which was childhood.

  Virginia Woolf

  Time, Space, Childhood

  Virginia Woolf, Jeanne Schulkind (1976). “Moments of being: unpublished autobiographical writings”, Sussex University Press

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• Does Nature supplement what man advanced? Or does she complete what he began?

  Virginia Woolf

  Men, Doe, Supplements

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• We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Sight, Personality

  The Common Reader (1925) "The Modern Essay"

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• ... pure honesty is a doubtful quality; it means often lack of imagination.

  Virginia Woolf

  Honesty, Mean, Imagination

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

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• It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.

  Virginia Woolf

  World, Might, Mrs Dalloway

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.184, Wordsworth Editions

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• There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us, and not we, them.

  Virginia Woolf

  Views, Clothes, Support

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.63, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• For it is a curious fact that though human beings have such imperfect means of communication, that they can only say 'good to eat' when they mean 'beautiful' and the other way about, they will yet endure ridicule and misunderstanding rather than keep any experience to themselves.

  Virginia Woolf

  Beautiful, Communication, Mean

  Virginia Woolf (2014). “Orlando”, p.122, OUP Oxford

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