Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 31

Quotes about:

• For the eye has this strange property: it rests only on beauty.

  Virginia Woolf

  Eye, Strange, Property

  Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.179, Oxford University Press

  4 Copy quote

• Suppose the looking glass smashes, the image disappears, and the romantic figure with the green of forest depths all about it is there no longer, but only that shell of a person which is seen by other people - what an airless, shallow, bald, prominent world it becomes! A world not to be lived in. As we face each other in omnibuses and underground railways we are looking into the mirror that accounts for the vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, in our eyes.

  Virginia Woolf

  Eye, Glasses, Mirrors

  Virginia Woolf (2017). “A arte da brevidade: Contos”, p.7, Autêntica

  4 Copy quote

• Needless to say, the business of living interferes with the solitude so needed for any work of the imagination. Here's what Virginia Woolf said in her diary about the sticky issue: "I've shirked two parties, and another Frenchman, and buying a hat, and tea with Hilda Trevelyan, for I really can't combine all this with keeping all my imaginary people going.

  Virginia Woolf

  Party, Virginia, Two

  6 Copy quote

• In fact, though their acquaintance had been so short, they had guessed, as always happens between lovers, everything of any importance about each other in two seconds at the utmost, and it now remained only to fill in such unimportant details as what they were called; where they lived; and whether they were beggars or people of substance.

  Virginia Woolf

  Two, People, Details

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1260, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• When I am grown up I shall carry a notebook—a fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I shall enter my phrases.

  Virginia Woolf

  Notebook, Phrases, Pages

  Virginia Woolf (2005). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.654, Wordsworth Editions

  4 Copy quote

• There is something about the present which we would not exchange, though we were offered a choice of all past ages to live in.

  Virginia Woolf

  Past, Choices, Age

  Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.27, Oxford University Press

  4 Copy quote

• But Time, unfortunately, though it makes animals and vegetables bloom and fade with amazing punctuality has no such simple effect upon the mind of man.

  Virginia Woolf

  Animal, Simple, Men

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.140, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• How far we are going to read a poet when we can read about a poet is a problem to lay before biographers.

  Virginia Woolf

  Problem, Poet, Lays

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4047, Delphi Classics

  5 Copy quote

• The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it.

  Virginia Woolf

  Ocean, Wrinkles, Sea

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.3, Virginia Woolf

  4 Copy quote

• I believe that the main thing in beginning a novel is to feel, not that you can write it, but that it exists on the far side of a gulf, which words can't cross: that it's to be pulled through only in a breathless anguish.

  Virginia Woolf

  Believe, Writing, Sides

  Virginia Woolf, Joanne Trautmann Banks (1977). “A Change of Perspective”, Chatto & Windus

  4 Copy quote

• Like most uneducated Englishwomen, I like reading--I like reading books in the bulk.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Reading, Reading Books

  Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.142

  4 Copy quote

• Love ought to stop on both sides, don’t you think, simultaneously?’ He spoke without any stress on the words, so as not to wake the sleepers. ‘But it won’t - that’s the devil,’ he added in the same undertone.

  Virginia Woolf

  Stress, Thinking, Devil

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1697, Delphi Classics

  6 Copy quote

• She was like a crinkled poppy; with the desire to drink dry dust.

  Virginia Woolf

  Dust, Desire, Dry

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.757, Wordsworth Editions

  13 Copy quote

• At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial-and any question about sex is that-one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold.

  Virginia Woolf

  Sex, Doe, Opinion

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

  7 Copy quote

• There was no treachery too base for the world to commit.

  Virginia Woolf

  World, Treachery, Commit

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.297, Wordsworth Editions

  4 Copy quote

• Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontes and George Eliot could no more have written than Shakespeare could have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and tamed the natural savagery of the tongue. For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

  Virginia Woolf

  Thinking, Years, Voice

  Virginia Woolf (1989). “A Room of One's Own”, p.79, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• Walden - all his books, indeed - are packed with subtle, conflicting, and very fruitful discoveries. They are not written to prove something in the end. They are written as the Indians turn down twigs to mark their path through the forest. He cuts his way through life as if no one had ever taken that road before, leaving these signs for those who come after, should they care to see which way he went.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Taken, Cutting

  Virginia Woolf, Andrew McNeillie (1986). “The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1912-1918”, Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• All artists need a room of their own

  Virginia Woolf

  Artist, Needs, Rooms

  4 Copy quote

• A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Mind, Excellence

  7 Copy quote

• Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it.

  Virginia Woolf

  Running, Tombstone, Cutting

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2645, Delphi Classics

  10 Copy quote

• Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

  Virginia Woolf

  People, Body, Crowds

  Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.49

  12 Copy quote

• For it is probable that when people talk aloud, the selves (of which there may be more than two thousand) are conscious of disserverment, and are trying to communicate but when communication is established there is nothing more to be said.

  Virginia Woolf

  Communication, Self, Two

  4 Copy quote

• letters are venerable; and the telephone valiant, for the journey is a lonely one, and if bound together by notes and telephones we went in company, perhaps - who knows? - we might talk by the way.

  Virginia Woolf

  Lonely, Communication, Journey

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.68, Wordsworth Editions

  4 Copy quote

• As a creator of character his peculiarity is that he creates wherever his eyes rest ... With such a power at his command Dickens made his books blaze up, not by tightening the plot or sharpening the wit, but by throwing another handful of people upon the fire.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Character, Eye

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.3106, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• But the close withdrew: the hand softened. It was over-- the moment.

  Virginia Woolf

  Hands, Moments

  4 Copy quote

Page 31 of 33

First

← Prev

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin