Quotessence
Home / Authors / Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllWritingIfsPeopleVirginia WoolfMenThinkingMindWorldWomenBook

Famous Virginia Woolf Quotes

“And I will now rock the brown basin from side to side so that my ships may ride the waves. Some will founder. Some will dash themselves against the cliffs. One sails alone. That is my ship. It sails into icy caverns where the sea-bear barks and stalactites swing green chairs. The waves rise, their crests curl; look at the lights on the mastheads. They have scattered, they have foundered, all except my ship which mounts the wave and sweeps before the gale and reaches the islands where the parrots chatter and then the creepers.”

LooksMayLightSidesSeaRocksBearsGreenWaveShipsIslandsBrownChairsSwingsFoundersSailCliffsBarkCurlsIcyChatterGaleParrotsCavernsCreepers
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)
Create image

“Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down.”

WorldMadeHandsMillionsDarknessSunSeaChangedCreaturesCloudsCastsTinyIgnorantInnocentStreamsPoolSharksWhalesDesolationBroodingMinnows
Book:To the Lighthouse
Create image

“We are about to part," said Neville. "Here are the boxes; here are the cabs. There is Percival in his billycock hat. He will forget me. He will leave my letters lying about among guns and dogs unaswered. I shall send him poems and he will perhaps reply with a picture post card. But it is for that that I love him. I shall propose a meeting - under a clock, by some Cross; and shall wait and he will not come. It is for that that I love him.”

SaidLyingWaitingForgetDogGunCrossesLettersMeetingsBoxesCardsPostsClockHatsProposeI Love HimCabForget Me
Book:Selected Works of Virginia Woolf
Create image

“...solitary like a pool at evening, far distant, seen from a train window, vanishing so quickly that the pool, pale in the evening, is scarcely robbed of its solitude, though once seen. *** Here sitting on the world, she thought, for she could not shake herself free from the sense that everything this morning was happening for the first time, perhaps for the last time, as a traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out of the train window, that he must look now, for he will never see that town, or that mule-cart, or that woman at work in the fields, again.”

KnowsWorldFirstsLooksLastsHalfMorningFieldsSolitudeHappeningsSittingFirst TimeWindowTownsTrainEveningShakesPoolSolitaryPaleLast TimeTravellerCartsVanishingMules
Author:Virginia Woolf
Create image

“Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can't dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than any words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.”

MindLongIdeasMatterUseHandsSimpleEmotionHalfVisionMorningStyleFitSittingSightProfoundWaveDeeperRhythmWrong Words
Book:The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1923-1928
Create image

“But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking? The entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world -- a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors.”

WorldSoulSelfBeautifulSpiritLeftSpeakDarkDrivenCowardIntrospectionVeilsUp And DownCorridorsLanterns
Book:Monday or Tuesday: Eight Stories
Create image

“For she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks, between her parents who stood by the lake, holding her life in her arms which, as she neared them, grew larger and larger in her arms, until it became a whole life, a complete life, which she put down by them and said, "This is what I have made of it! This!" And what had she made of it? What, indeed?”

ChildrenMadeSaidWholeParentArmsGrewWhole LifeBreadLakesThrowingDucksComplete Life
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)
Create image

“The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye, that opened suddenly, and softly in the evening. Now— James looked at the Lighthouse. He could see the white-washed rocks; the tower, stark and straight; he could see that it was barred with black and white; he could see windows in it; he could even see washing spread on the rocks to dry. So that was the Lighthouse, was it? No, the other was also the Lighthouse. For nothing was simply one thing. The other Lighthouse was true too.”

EyeBlackWhiteOne ThingRocksWindowSpreadEveningDryYellowBlack And WhiteTowersWashingStarksLighthouseMisty
Author:Virginia Woolf
Create image

“All great writers have, of course, an atmosphere in which they seem most at their ease and at their best; a mood of the general mind which they interpret and indeed almost discover, so that we come to read them rather for that than for any story or character or scene of seperate excellence.”

MindCharacterStoriesSeemsCoursesSceneExcellenceMoodAtmosphereEaseGreat Writers
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)
Create image

“It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked at that long steady light) as for oneself.”

IfsLongLightFeltTreeFlowerOneselfOddStreamsSteadyTendernessIrrational
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)
Create image

“Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning.”

PeopleIfsGivingMindBookWould BeAsksFictionExpectationsPrejudiceAskingBeing TrueDividedBiographiesAdmirableFlatteringOpen MindednessPreconceptions
Book:ON READING: Le plaisir de lire
Create image

“Other people have faces; Susan and Jinny have faces; they are here. Their world is the real world. The things they lift are heavy. They say Yes, they say No; whereas I shift and change and am seen through in a second. If they meet a housemaid she looks at them without laughing. But she laughs at me. They know what to say if spoken to. They laugh really; they get angry really; while I have to look first and do what other people do when they have done it.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWorldFirstsLooksRealDoneFacesLaughingAngryHeavyLiftsReal WorldHousemaids
Book:The Collected Novels of Virginia Woolf - Volume I - The Years, The Waves
Create image