Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 24

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and even a tea party means apprehension, breakage

Virginia Woolf

Party, Mean, Tea

Virginia Woolf (1983). “The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1931-1935”, Mariner Books

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In illness words seem to possess a mystic quality.

Virginia Woolf

Quality, Illness, Mystic

Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.108, Oxford University Press

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Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living?

Virginia Woolf

Goes On, Made, Dose

Virginia Woolf, Michael H. Whitworth (2014). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.42, Oxford University Press, USA

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What is amusing now had to be taken in desperate earnest once.

Virginia Woolf

Taken, Humor, History

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When she read just now to James, 'and there were numbers of soldiers with kettledrums and trumpets,' and his eyes darkened, she thought, why should they grow up, and lose all that?

Virginia Woolf

Growing Up, Grows, Loses

"Selected Works of Virginia Woolf".

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Am I alone in my egotism when I say that never does the pale light of dawn filter through the blinds of 52 Tavistock Square but I open my eyes and exclaim, "Good God! Here I am again!" not always with pleasure, often with pain; sometimes in a spasm.

Virginia Woolf

Pain, Eye, Here I Am

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4270, Delphi Classics

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People only become writers if they can't find the one book they've always wanted to read.

Virginia Woolf

Book, People, Wanted

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O why do I ever let anyone read what I write! Every time I have to go through a breakfast with a letter of criticism I swear I will write for my own praise or blame in future. It is a misery.

Virginia Woolf

Writing, Criticism, Breakfast

Virginia Woolf, Nigel Nicolson, Joanne Trautmann, Joanne Trautmann Banks (1975). “The Flight of the Mind”

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Venerable are letters, infinitely brave, forlorn, and lost. Life would split asunder without them. 'Come to tea, come to dinner, what's the truth of the story? have you heard the news? life in the capital is wonderful; the Russian dancers....' These are our stays and props. These lace our days together and make of life a perfect globe.

Virginia Woolf

Perfect, Dancer, Brave

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Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

Virginia Woolf

Flower, Mrs Dalloway, Said

Mrs. Dalloway pt. 1, sec. 1 (1925)

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The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw. One must get out of life...one must become externalised; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one's character, living in the brain.

Virginia Woolf

Mistake, Reading, Writing

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The word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.

Virginia Woolf

Sea, Genius, Dripping

The Common Reader "Notes on an Elizabethan Play" (1925)

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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

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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

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Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

Virginia Woolf

Giving, Creative, Add

Virginia Woolf (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.232, OUP Oxford

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... if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us to break her and bullyher, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.

Virginia Woolf

Art, Criticism, And Love

Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.12, Oxford University Press

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I got out this diary, & read as one always does read one's own writing, with a kind of guilty intensity.

Virginia Woolf

Writing, Diaries, Kind

"The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1915-1919".

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But our hatred is almost indistinguishable from our love.

Virginia Woolf

Hatred, Our Love

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.702, Wordsworth Editions

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So he was deserted. The whole world was clamouring: Kill yourself, kill yourself, for our sakes. But why should he kill himself for their sakes? Food was pleasant; the sun hot; and this killing oneself, how does one set about it, with a table knife, uglily, with floods of blood, - by sucking a gaspipe? He was too weak; he could scarcely raise his hand. Besides, now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know.

Virginia Woolf

Blood, Hands, Knives

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.92, Broadview Press

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Different though the sexes are, they inter-mix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is very opposite of what it is above.

Virginia Woolf

Sex, Opposites, Clothes

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.207, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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I feel that by writing I am doing what is far more necessary than anything else.

Virginia Woolf

Writing, Feels

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4186, Delphi Classics

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For such will be our ruin if you, in the immensity of your public abstractions, forget the private figure, or if we in the intensity of our private emotions forget the public world. Both houses will be ruined, the public and the private, the material and the spiritual, for they are inseparably connected.

Virginia Woolf

Spiritual, House, World

Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.365

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Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them.

Virginia Woolf

Lying, May, Flow

Virginia Woolf (2015). “A Room of One's Own (Annotated)”, p.4, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a room with someone, up went her back like a cat's; or she purred.

Virginia Woolf

Cat, Knowing, People

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.132, Wordsworth Editions

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Let it be fact, one feels, or let it be fiction; the imagination will not serve under two masters simultaneously.

Virginia Woolf

Two, Imagination, Fiction

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.3718, Delphi Classics

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Born: January 25, 1882
Died: March 28, 1941
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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