Quotessence
Home / Authors / Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllWritingIfsPeopleVirginia WoolfMenThinkingMindWorldWomenBook

Famous Virginia Woolf Quotes

“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.”

PeopleSaidTwoImaginationPartyIssuesNeededSolitudeTeaBuyingHatsImaginaryInterfereDiariesVirginiaStickyFrenchmenWoolf
Author:Virginia Woolf
Create image

“Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting, like the underlinen of a family of fourteen on a line in a gale of wind.”

KnowsWorldMayRunningNextLinesMemoriesMovementWindThousandOrdinarySittingTablesOddPullingFragmentsUp And DownNeedlesFourteenSitting DownDisconnectedGaleCapriciousAgitateFlaunting
Book:Selected Works of Virginia Woolf
Create image

“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.”

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

“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.”

PeopleWorldPersonsEyeFacesFiguresAccountsMirrorsGreenDepthGlassesDisappearForestsShellsShallowProminentGleamRailwayVagueness
Book:A arte da brevidade: Contos
Create image

“She fell into a deep pool of sticky water, which eventually closed over her head. She saw nothing and heard nothing but a faint booming sound, which was the sound of the sea rolling over her head. While all her tormentors thought that she was dead, she was not dead, but curled up at the bottom of the sea.”

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

“She had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!”

MindLittlesEnoughEyeFeltKnownSeaPureBlueWaveDelightIntenseBrokeBeachRoughEcstasyHer EyesExquisiteDaylightFadedLemons
Book:To the Lighthouse
Create image

“The waves broke and spread their waters swiftly over the shore. One after another they massed themselves and fell; the spray tossed itself back with the energy of their fall. The waves were steeped deep-blue save for a pattern of diamond-pointed light on their backs which rippled as the backs of great horses ripple with muscles as they move. The waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great beast stamping.”

LightMovingFallEnergyWaterHorseBlueWavePatternsSpreadBrokeBeastMusclesShoreDiamondRippleSprayGreat Horse
Book:The Waves
Create image

“Waves of hands, hesitations at street corners, someone dropping a cigarette into the gutter-all are stories. But which is the true story? That I do not know. Hence I keep my phrases hung like clothes in a cupboard, waiting for some one to wear them. Thus waiting, thus speculating, making this note and then an· other I do not cling to life. I shall be brushed like a bee from a sunflower. My philosophy, always accumulating, welling up moment by moment, runs like quicksilver a dozen ways at once.”

KnowsWayPhilosophyMomentsStoriesHandsRunningWaitingStreetsClothesNotesWaveCornersPhrasesDozenBeesCigaretteHungDroppingHesitationTrue StoryGuttersSunflowerCupboardsStreet Corners
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)
Create image