Virginia Woolf Quotes


As long as she thinks of a man nobody objects to a woman thinking. Virginia Woolf Gender 196
Money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for. Virginia Woolf Money 191
Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Virginia Woolf Life 166
Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money. Virginia Woolf Writing 155
I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual Virginia Woolf Optimism 137
Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame. Virginia Woolf Habits 125
Humor is the first gift to perish in a foreign language. Virginia Woolf Translation 118
The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness. Virginia Woolf Perception 116
All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. Virginia Woolf Feminism 116
Boredom is the legitimate kingdom of the philanthropic. Virginia Woolf Charity 113
Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent. Virginia Woolf Conformity 110
I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in. Virginia Woolf Chance 108
It is no use trying to sum people up. One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done. Virginia Woolf Actions 103
Arrange Whatever pieces come your way. Virginia Woolf Opportunity 101
The word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping. Virginia Woolf Words 101
It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. Virginia Woolf Dream 101
Life stand still here. Virginia Woolf Life 100
Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art. Virginia Woolf Art 98
My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery always buzzing humming soaring roaring diving and then buried in mud. And why Whats this passion for Virginia Woolf Introspection 97
The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them the night wrapped them nothing broke their sleep until the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness Virginia Woolf Sleep 97
It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses. Virginia Woolf Age 96
First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Virginia Woolf Life 96
We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print. Virginia Woolf Authors 94
This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room. Virginia Woolf Women 93
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 Legacy 93
All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point Virginia Woolf Authors 92
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people. Virginia Woolf Truth 91
For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver. Virginia Woolf Writing 90
Every season is likeable, and wet days and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and the most common actions Virginia Woolf Sleep 89
Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm words that have lain dormant now lift now toss their crests and fall and rise and falls again. I am a poet yes. Surely I am a great poet. Virginia Woolf Poet 89
If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure - the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully? Virginia Woolf Women 87
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. Virginia Woolf Money 86
The real novelist the perfectly simple human being could go on indefinitely imaging. Virginia Woolf Author 85
When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darknessI am nothing. Virginia Woolf Existence 85
I want the concentration and the romance, and the worlds all glued together, fused, glowing: have no time to waste any more on prose. Virginia Woolf Concentration 84
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 Thought 84
So the days pass, and I ask myself whether one is not hypnotized, as a child by a silver globe, by life, and whether this is living. Virginia Woolf Life 83
For we think back through our mothers if we are women. Virginia Woolf Women 83
Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth. Virginia Woolf Business 82
On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points. Virginia Woolf Pain 82
Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. Virginia Woolf People 81
She would not have cared to confess how infinitely she preferred the exactitude the starlike impersonality of figures to the confusion agitation and vagueness of the finest prose. Virginia Woolf Literature 81
This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant. Virginia Woolf Altogether 80
Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe. Virginia Woolf Mind 80
To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves. Virginia Woolf Control 80
Chastity ... has even now a religious importance in a womans life and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it free and bring it to the light of day demands courage of the rarest. Virginia Woolf Self determination 80
Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life. Virginia Woolf Curtailment 79
I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again -- as I always am when I write. Virginia Woolf Authors 78
Anon who wrote so many poems without signing them was often a woman. Virginia Woolf Poetry 78
As the streets that lead from the Strand to the Embankment are very narrow, it is better not to walk down them arm-in-arm. If you persist, lawyers Virginia Woolf City 78

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Virginia Woolf Quotes

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