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Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf Quotes

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Famous Virginia Woolf Quotes

“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.”

KnowsWorldRememberSpeakForeverTreeThis WorldAdventureMarriedMy FriendsGlassesExperimentsFlightEngagedTonightStabilityQuantitySailBeing MarriedMixingBalloonsDineTree Tops
Book:Selected Works of Virginia Woolf
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“To evade such temptations is the first duty of the poet. For as the ear is the antechamber to the soul, poetry can adulterate and destroy more surely then lust or gunpowder. The poet's, then, is the highest office of all. His words reach where others fall short. A silly song of Shakespeare's has done more for the poor and the wicked than all the preachers and philanthropists in the world.”

WorldFirstsSoulDoneSongFallPoorPoetDutyOfficeHighestEarsSillyLustTemptationWickedPreacherPhilanthropistGunpowder
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)
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“For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping.”

WayNeedsSoulSportsSpaceSunSeaWindColdWaveFishesSurfaceGiantsWeedBrushesObscurityGloomKindlesInscrutableDeep SeaPlies
Book:Mrs Dalloway
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“It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only? Ought not education to bring out and fortify the differences rather than the similarities?”

IfsMenWorldShouldTwoWould BeSexDifferencesOughtThousandPityManageVarietyConsideringInadequateSimilarityVastness
Book:A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas
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“Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.”

MindBigsOrderFallConsciousnessRecordsSightPatternsAppearanceGrantedScoreAtomsIncidentsDisconnected
Book:The Common Reader
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“Yet, she said to herself, form the dawn of time odes have been sung to love; wreaths heaped and roses; and if you asked nine people out of ten they would say they wanted nothing but this--love; while the women, judging from her own experience, would all the time be feeling, This is not what we want; there is nothing more tedious, puerile, and inhumane than this; yet it is also beautiful and necessary.”

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Book:Ao farol: To the lighthouse: Edição bilíngue português - inglês
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“What has praise and fame to do with poetry? Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? So that all this chatter and praise, and blame and meeting people who admired one and meeting people who did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itself- a voice answering a voice.”

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Book:Orlando: A Biography
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“Behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we—I mean all human beings—are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.”

WorldHumansMeanArtWholeHuman BeingsBehindsMassPatternsConnectedWhole WorldWorks Of ArtThere Is No GodCottonQuartetsWool
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)
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“He loved, beneath all this summer transiency, to feel the earth's spine beneath him; for such he took the hard root of the oak tree to be; or, for image followed image, it was the back of a great horse that he was riding, or the deck of a tumbling ship -- it was anything indeed, so long as it was hard, for he felt the need of something which he could attach his floating heart to; the heart that tugged at his side; the heart that seemed filled with spiced and amorous gales every evening about this time when he walked out.”

NeedsFeelsHeartLongHardEarthFeltSidesTreeSummerRootsHorseFilledShipsEveningRidingFloatingSpineOaksDeckGaleOak TreeAmorousTumblingGreat Horse
Book:Orlando
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“To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other people's feelings, to rend the thin veils of civilisation so wantonly, so brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without replying, dazed and blinded, she bend her head as if to let her pelt f jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked.”

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Author:Virginia Woolf
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“Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before her—who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world?”

IfsWorldFirstsDoeStillsBookAgeStarsWifeSonHeroWasteWindowBlameLipsLovelyIsolationPocketsIntensityRejoiceMagnificentPipeHaltUnfamiliarHomageBendingArmourPerishingBeauty Of The WorldWife And Son
Book:To the Lighthouse
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