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Virginia Woolf

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Famous Virginia Woolf Quotes

“Quiet descended on her, calm, content, as her needle, drawing the silk smoothly to its gentle pause, collected the green folds together and attached them, very lightly, to the belt. So on a summer’s day waves collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall; and the whole world seems to be saying “that is all” more and more ponderously, until even the heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach says too, That is all. Fear no more, says the heart. Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall. And the body alone listens to the passing bee; the wave breaking; the dog barking, far away barking and barking.”

InspirationalCalming
Book:Mrs. Dalloway
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“[Speaking to a group of female students] Have you any notion how many books are written [by men] about women in the course of one year? (...) Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe? (...) Professors, schoolmasters, sociologists, clergymen, novelists, essayists, journalists, men who had no qualification save that they were not women (...) were very angry (...) as they wrote (...) about the mental, moral, and physical inferiority of women. (...) Why were they angry? (...) Possibly when the professor [imagined by V. Woolf as a prototype of patriarchal writer] insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. (...) Hence the enormous importance to a patriarch (...) of feeling that great number of people, half the human race indeed [=women], are by nature inferior to himself. Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. (…) That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism. For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished (…) A Room of One´s Own, chapter 2”

PatriarchyFragile Masculinity
Author:Virginia Woolf
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“Life for both sexes - and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement - is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority - it may be wealth, or rank, a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney - for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination - over other people.”

FeminismFeministSexismWomen WritersMysogynyWomen AuthorsBloomsburyVirigina Woolf
Author:Virginia Woolf
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“[At the British Museum] For it is a perennial puzzle why no woman wrote a word [in the time of Shakespeare] when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet. What were the conditions in which women lived, I asked myself; (...) [In] Professor Trevelyan's History of England [one can read that] wife-beating [or daughter-beating] was a recognized right of man (...) [A woman] could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband [or father]. Here I am asking why women did not write poetry in the Elisabethan age, and I am not sure how they were educated; whether they were taught to write; whether they had sitting-rooms to themselves; how many women had children before they were 21; what, in short, they did from eight in the morning till eight at night. They had no money evidently; (...) they were married whether they liked it or not (...) at fifteen or sixteen very likely... [Under these circumstances] It would have been extremely odd (...) for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare. (...) When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet (...). Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anom, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. (...) And undoubtedly, I thought, looking at the shelf where there are no plays by women, her work would have gone unsigned. That refuge she would have sought certainly.”

PatriarchyMysogynyFear Of WomenInvisibility Of WomenWomen Property Of Men
Book:A Room of One’s Own
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“Here is Lady Winchilsea, for example, (...) She was born in the year 1661; she was noble by birth and by marriage; she was childless; she wrote poetry, and one has only to open her poetry to find her bursting out in indignation against the position of women. (...) The human race is split up for her into two parties. Men are the 'opposing faction'; men are hated and feared, because they have the power to bar her way to what she wants to do - which is to write. Alas! a woman that attempts the pen, Such a presumptuous creature is esteemed, The fault can by no virtue be redeemed. They tell us we mistake our sex and way; Good breeding, fshion, dancing, dressing, play, Are the accomplishments we should desire; To write, or read, or think, or to inquire, Would cloud our beauty , and exhaust our time, And interrupt the conquests of our prime, Whilst the dull manage of a servile house Is held by some our utmost art and use. (...) A Room of One's Own Chapter 4”

PatriarchyFear Of Women
Author:Virginia Woolf
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“Ujmując rzecz po grubiańsku, piłka nożna i sport są „istotne"; zaś moda i kupowanie strojów - „trywialne". I te wartości nieuchronnie zostają przeniesione do literatury. Oto ważna książka, zakłada z góry krytyk, ponieważ traktuje o wojnie. A oto książka nieistotna, bo mowa w niej o uczuciach kobiet w bawialni. Scena z pola bitwy jest ważniejsza niż scena ze sklepu - różnica wartości zaznacza się wszędzie, choć często znacznie subtelniej.”

SportFeminizmKobietaKobietyWojnaPrawa KobietKobiecośćKosmetykiPiłka NożnaZakupy
Book:A Room of One’s Own
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“Nuestro punto de vista lo pasan completamente por alto: nunca hemos sentido de veras la presión de una sola ley, nuestras pasiones y desesperaciones nada tienen que ver con el comercio, nuestros vicios y virtudes florecen por igual, e imparcialmente, al margen del gobierno que está en el poder. La maquinaria que describen... logran hasta cierto punto llevarnos a creer en todo ello, pero el meollo de la cuestión lo dejan sin tocar siquiera. ¿Será acaso porque no está en su mano entenderlo?”

LiteraturaHistoriaPolítica
Book:Horas en una biblioteca
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“And were they happy together? Sally asked ...; for, she admitted, she knew nothing about them, only jumped to conclusions, as one does, for what can one know even of the people one lives with every day? she asked. Are we not all prisoners? She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell, and she had felt that was true of life — one scratched on the wall.”

Other PeopleKnowing PeopleOther People S HappinessDo We Really Know AnyoneOther People S ShoesWe Don T Know Anyone
Book:Mrs. Dalloway
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“Indeed, she had the whole of the other sex under her protection; for reasons she could not explain, for their chivalry and valour, for the fact that they negotiated treaties, ruled India, controlled finance; finally for an attitude towards herself which no woman could fail to feel or to find agreeable, something trustful, childlike, reverential; which an old woman could take from a young man without loss of dignity, and woe betide the girl––pray Heaven it was none of her daughters!––who did not feel the worth of it, and all that it implied, to the marrow of her bones!”

ExpectationsGender RolesMother Daughter RelationshipMale Female Relationships
Book:To the Lighthouse
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“Per secoli le donne hanno avuto la funzione di specchi dal potere magico e delizioso di riflettere raddoppiata la figura dell’uomo. (…) Qualunque possa essere il loro uso nelle civiltà civilizzate, gli specchi sono indispensabili per ogni azione violenta ed eroica. Ecco perché Napoleone e Mussolini sostengono con tanta veemenza l’inferiorità delle donne, perché se queste non fossero inferiori, gli uomini cesserebbero di ingrandirsi. Questo serve a spiegare in parte, il bisogno che tanto spesso gli uomini sentono delle donne. E serve a spiegare la misura del loro disagio se colpiti dalla critica femminile; l’impossibilità per la donna di dire questo libro è brutto, questo dipinto manca di personalità, o qualunque altra cosa, senza suscitare molto più dolore e molta più rabbia di un uomo che esprimesse le stesse critiche. Perchè se lei comincia a dire la verità, la figura nello specchio si rimpicciolisce; viene eliminata la sua idoneità alla vita. Come potrà continuare a giudicare, civilizzare gli indigeni, emanare leggi, scrivere libri,vestirsi a festa e sproloquiare ai banchetti, se non riesce a vedersi a colazione e a cena almeno il doppio di quanto è realmente?”

LifeHumanityBooksWomanLibriVirginia WoolfDonne
Book:A Room of One’s Own
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“Și în mine se înaltă valul. Se umflă. Își arcuiește spinarea. Simt un dor proaspăt, care se cablează ca armăsarul mândru pe care călărețul îl lovește cu pintenii și-l strunește apoi. Tu, care mă porți în spinare, spune-mi ce dușman e acela care se vede venind către noi, în timp ce tropotul nostru răsună pe caldarâm? E moartea. Moartea e dușmanul. Împotriva ei mă năpustesc cu lancea culcată, cu pletele fluturând în urma mea ca pletele unui tânăr, ca pletele lui Percival când galopa în India. Înfig pintenii în coastele calului. Neînfrânat si dârz , mă năpustesc împotriva ta, Moarte! Valurile se spărgeau de țărm.”

ViataVirginia WoolfMoarte
Author:Virginia Woolf
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“Ce era asta? Ce însemna asta? Oare lucrurile puteau să-și întindă mâna, așa, și să te zgâlțâie; lama de cuțit putea să taie? pumnul să inșface? Nu exista o siguranță? Nicio posibilitate să înveți pe de rost căile vieții? Nicio îndrumare, niciun adăpost, totul era miracol, saltul din vârful unui pisc în spațiu? E posibil ca asta să fie viața, chiar pentru oamenii mai în vârstă? Surprinzătoare, neașteptată, necunoscută?” O clipă avu impresia că dacă s-ar ridica amândoi, aici, acum, pe pajiște, și ar cere o explicație, de ce e viața atât de scurtă, de ce e atât de inexplicabilă, daca și-ar formula întrebările vehement, așa cum ar fi îndreptățite să o facă două ființe umane bine oțelite, față de care nimic nu trebuie ascuns, atunci frumusețea s-ar desfășura; vidul s-ar umple; arabescurile acelea deșarte s-ar împreuna într-o formă; dacă ei doi ar striga destul de tare, doamna Ramsay s-ar întoarce. ”Doamnă Ramsay! strigă cu glas tare. Doamnă Ramsay!” Lacrimile i se rostogoleau pe obraji.”

ViataMoarteEfemeritateSpre FarTrecere
Author:Virginia Woolf
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“Cos'altro posso fare per incoraggiarvi a far fronte alla vita? Ragazze, dovrei dirvi – e per favore ascoltatemi, perché comincia la perorazione – che a mio parere siete vergognosamente ignoranti. Non avete mai fatto scoperte di alcuna importanza. Non avete mai fatto tremare un impero, né condotto in battaglia un esercito. Non avete scritto i drammi di Shakespeare, e non avete mai impartito i benefici della civiltà ad una razza barbara. Come vi giustificate? È facile dire, indicando le strade, le piazze, le foreste del globo gremite di abitanti neri e bianchi e color caffè, tutti freneticamente indaffarati nell'industria, nel commercio, nell'amore: abbiamo avuto altro da fare. Senza la nostra attività nessuno avrebbe solcato questi mari, e queste terre fertili sarebbero state deserto. Abbiamo partorito e allevato e lavato e istruito, forse fino all'età di sei o sette anni, i milleseicentoventitré milioni di esseri umani che secondo le statistiche sono attualmente al mondo; e questa fatica, anche ammettendo che qualcuno ci abbia aiutate, richiede tempo. C'è del vero in quel che dite – non lo nego. Ma nello stesso tempo devo ricordarvi che fin dal 1866 esistevano in Inghilterra almeno due colleges femminili; che, a partire dal 1880, una donna sposata poteva, per legge, possedere i propri beni; e nel 1919 – cioè più di nove anni fa – le è stato concesso il voto? Devo anche ricordarvi che da ben dieci anni vi è stato aperto l'accesso a quasi tutte le professioni? Se riflettete su questi immensi privilegi e sul lungo tempo in cui sono stati goduti, e sul fatto che in questo momento devono esserci quasi duemila donne in grado di guadagnare più di cinquecento sterline l'anno, in un modo o nell'altro, ammetterete che la scusa di mancanza di opportunità, di preparazione, di incoraggiamento, di agio e di denaro non regge più. Inoltre gli economisti ci dicono che la signora Seton ha avuto troppi figli. Naturalmente dovete continuare a far figli, ma, così dicono, solo due o tre a testa, non dieci o dodici.”

InspirationalDonneFemminismoA Room Of One S OwnUna Stanza Tutta Per Sé
Book:A Room of One's Own
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“Giacché se la donna comincia a dire la verità, la figura nello specchio rimpicciolisce; l'uomo diventa meno adatto alla vita. Come potrebbe continuare a giudicare, a civilizzare gli indigeni, a legiferare, a scrivere libri, a indossare il tight e a pronunciare discorsi nei banchetti, se non fosse più in grado di vedersi riflesso, a colazione e a pranzo, almeno due volte più grande di quanto veramente sia?”

Femminismo
Book:A Room of One's Own / Three Guineas
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“Sie sah Julia – Sie sah, wie Julia die Arme öffnete; sah sie glühen; sah sie in Flammen stehen. Aus der Nacht brannte sie hervor wie ein erloschener weißer Stern. Julia küßte sie. Julia besaß sie. "Slater-Nadeln haben keine Spitzen", sagte Miss Craye mit einem seltsamen Lachen und lockerte die Arme, als Fanny Wilmot sich mit zitternden Fingern die Blume an die Brust steckte.”

LiebeLesbischLesbenErzählungenAugenblicke Des SeinsEin Verwunschenes Haus
Author:Virginia Woolf
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“En ce moment, je me sépare tant soit peu de moi-même et vais à la rencontre de la personne qui s'approche; je fais semblant de la reconnaitre bien que je ne sache encore qui c'est. Comme l'addition d'un ami nous transforme curieusement, même à distance... L'utilité des amis est incontestable, en ce qu'ils nous font rentrer dans la réalité. Et pourtant, est-ce assez pénible d'y devoir rentrer, se sentir mêlé, adultéré, fondu, de faire partie d'un autre être ? A mesure que cette personne approche, je cesse d'être Moi pour devenir Moi plus quelqu'un.”

IdentitéRéalitéMoi
Book:The Waves
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“Se sconsideratezza è l’avventurarsi disarmati nell’antro di un leone, sconsideratezza avventurarsi sull’Atlantico in una barca a remi, sconsideratezza fare la cicogna sulla cupola di St Paul, più sconsiderato ancora è tornarsene a casa sole in compagnia di un poeta. Un poeta è insieme Atlantico e leone. Se sfuggi alle zanne, soccombi ai flutti. Un uomo capace di distruggere le illusioni è al tempo stesso belva e onda.”

PoesiaParoleSolitudineIllusioniOndeLeoni
Book:Orlando
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“Nothing need be said; nothing could be said. There it was, all around them. It partook, she felt, helping Mr. Bankes to a specially tender piece, of eternity; as she had already felt about something different once before that afternoon; there is a coherence in things, a stability; something, she meant, is immune from change, and shines out in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby; so that again to-night she had the feeling she had had once to-day already, of peace, of rest. Of such moments, she thought, the thing is made that remains for ever after. This would remain.”

RevelationsIntrospectionThe Moment
Book:To the Lighthouse
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“For there we sit surrounded by objects which enforce the memories of our own experience... But when the door shuts on us, all that vanishes. The shell-like covering which our souls have excreted to house themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken, and there is left of all these wrinkles and roughness a central pearl of perceptiveness, an enormous eye. How beautiful a street is in winter!”

SpaceIdentityPerceptionPublic LifeThe SelfCommutingFlaneurLiving SpacePerambulator
Author:Virginia Woolf
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“No vulgar jealousy could separate her from Richard. But she feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton’s face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence, so that she filled the room she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitating one moment on the threshold of her drawing-room, an exquisite suspense, such as might stay a diver before plunging while the sea darkens and brightens beneath him, and the waves which threaten to break, but only gently split their surface, roll and conceal and encrust as they just turn over the weeds with pearl.”

LifeMarriageLost YouthRemenising
Book:Mrs. Dalloway
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“Emigration was not to others the obvious remedy, the sublime conception. It was not to them ... the liberator of the pent egotism, which a strong martial woman, well nourished, well descended, of direct impulses, downright feelings, and little introspective power (broad and simple—why could not every one be broad and simple? she asked) feels rise within her, once youth is past, and must eject upon some objectit may be Emigration, it may be Emancipation; but whatever it be, this object round which the essence of her soul is daily secreted, becomes inevitably prismatic, lustrous, half looking glass, half precious stone; now carefully hidden in case people should sneer at it; now proudly displayed.”

Old AgeGrowing OldBeing OldLost YouthYoung Vs OldBeing Older
Book:Mrs. Dalloway
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“But Proportion has a sister, less smiling, more formidable, a Goddess even now engaged--in the heat and sands of India, the mud and swamp of Africa, the purlieus of London, wherever in short the climate or the devil tempts men to fall from the true belief which is her own--is even now engaged in dashing down shrines, smashing idols, and setting up in their place her own stern countenance. Conversion is her name and she feasts on the wills of the weakly, loving to impress, to impose, adoring her own features stamped on the face of the populace. At Hyde Park Corner on a tub she stands preaching; shrouds herself in white and walks penitentially disguised as brotherly love through factories and parliaments; offers help, but desires power; smites out of her way roughly the dissentient, or dissatisfied; bestows her blessing on those who, looking upward, catch submissively from her eyes the light of their own. [She] had her dwelling in [his] heart, though concealed, as she mostly is, under some plausible disguise; some venerable name; love, duty, self sacrifice. How he would work--how toil to raise funds, propagate reforms, initiate institutions! But conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will.”

ReligionConversionProportionThe Hours
Book:Mrs. Dalloway
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“For if there are (at a venture) seventy-six different times all ticking in the mind at once, how many different people are there not - Heaven help us _ all having lodgement at one time or another in the human spirit? Some say two thousand and fifty two. So that it is the most usual thing in the world for a person to call, directly they are alone...Come, come! I'm sick to death of this particular self. I want another. But it is not altogether plain sailing either...these selves of which we are built up, one on top of another, as plates are piled up on a waiter's hand, have attachments elsewhere, sympathies, little constitutions and rights of their own...so that one will only come if it is raining....another if you can promise it a glass of wine - and so on...”

IdentitySelf AwarenessShiftingMultiplicityFragmentedPerformativePost Structural
Author:Virginia Woolf
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