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Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf Quotes

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Famous Virginia Woolf Quotes

“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?”

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Book:To the Lighthouse
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“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)
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“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
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“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
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“Twice Flush had done his utmost to kill his enemy; twice he had failed. And why had he failed, he asked himself? Because he loved Miss Barrett. Looking up at her from under his eyebrows as she lay, severe and silent on the sofa, he knew that he must love her for ever. Things are not simple but complex. If he bit Mr. Browning he bit her too. Hatred is not hatred; hatred is also love.”

IfsDoneBitsSimpleEnemyMissingHatredLaysSilentComplexesSevereEyebrowsSofas
Book:Flush
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“Listening (had there been any one to listen) from the upper rooms of the empty house only gigantic chaos streaked with lightning could have been heard tumbling and tossing, as the winds and waves disported themselves like the amorphous bulks of leviathans whose brows are pierced by no light of reason, and mounted one on top of another, and lunged and plunged in the darkness or the daylight (for night and day, month and year ran shapelessly together) in idiot games, until it seemed as if the universe were battling and tumbling, in brute confusion and wanton lust aimlessly by itself.”

IfsYearsHas BeensReasonLightTogetherNightUniverseGamesHouseRoomsDarknessHeardWindListeningMonthsEmptyChaosWaveLustConfusionIdiotRanLightningCould Have BeenBrutesBrowsDaylightWantonTumblingLeviathanEmpty Houses
Book:Selected Works of Virginia Woolf
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“Now to sum it up,' said Bernard. 'Now to explain to you the meaning of my life. Since we do not know each other (though I met you once I think, on board a ship going to Africa), we can talk freely. The illusion is upon me that something adheres for a moment, has roundness, weight, depth, is completed. This, for the moment, seems to be my life. If it were possible, I would hand it you entire. I would break it off as one breaks off a bunch of grapes. I would say, "Take it. This is my life.”

IfsThinkingKnowsSaidMomentsHandsSeemsBreakMetsIllusionWeightDepthBunchShipsBoardsGrapesBreak Off
Book:The Waves
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“If one is to deal with people on a large scale and say what one thinks, how can one avoid melancholy? I don’t admit to being hopeless, though: only the spectacle is a profoundly strange one; and as the current answers don’t do, one has to grope for a new one, and the process of discarding the old, when one is by no means certain what to put in their place, is a sad one.”

PeopleIfsThinkingMeanCertainProcessAnswersDealsStrangeCurrentsScalesHopelessMelancholyLarge Scale
Author:Virginia Woolf
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“There must be another life, she thought, sinking back into her chair, exasperated. Not in dreams; but here and now, in this room, with living people. She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice with her hair blown back; she was about to grasp something that just evaded her. There must be another life, here and now, she repeated. This is too short, too broken. We know nothing, even about ourselves.”

PeopleIfsKnowsLifeDreamFeltRoomsHairBrokenStandingEdgesChairsToo ShortHere And NowSinkingAnother LifePrecipiceStanding On The Edge
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)
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“If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of utmost importance; very various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as a man; some think even greater.”

IfsThinkingMenMeanPersonsBeautifulWomenExistenceFictionGreaterImagineWrittenImportanceVariousExtremesHeroicSplendidHideous
Book:Selected Works of Virginia Woolf
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“A strange thing has happened - while all the other arts were born naked, this, the youngest, has been born fully-clothed. It can say everything before it has anything to say. It is as if the savage tribe, instead of finding two bars of iron to play with, had found scattering the seashore fiddles, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, grand pianos by Erhard and Bechstein, and had begun with incredible energy, but without knowing a note of music, to hammer and thump upon them all at the same time.”

IfsHas BeensArtTwoPlayFilmFoundEnergyBornKnowingHappenedStrangeFindingsNotesIncrediblesBarsNakedPianoIronSavagesTribesHammersTrumpetsStrange ThingsSaxophoneFiddleFlutesSeashore
Book:The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1925-1928
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“The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life - the number of children, whether she had money of her own, if she had a room to herself, whether she had help bringing up her family, if she had servants, whether part of the housework was her task - it is only when we can measure the way of life and experience made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer.”

IfsKnowsWayChildrenMadeHelpingRoomsNumbersConditionsDependsOrdinaryTasksAccountsExtraordinaryAverageServantHouseworkSuccess Or Failure
Book:Virginia Woolf, women and writing
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“For such will be our ruin if you, in the immensity of your public abstractions, forget the private figure, or if we in the intensity of our private emotions forget the public world. Both houses will be ruined, the public and the private, the material and the spiritual, for they are inseparably connected.”

IfsWorldSpiritualHouseForgetEmotionFiguresMaterialsConnectedRuinsIntensityRuinedAbstractionImmensity
Book:A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas
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“He looked very old. He looked, James thought, getting his head now against the Lighthouse, now against the waste of waters running away into the open, like some old stone lying on the sand; he looked as if he had become physically what was always at the back of both of their minds-that loneliness which was for both of them the truth about things.”

IfsMindRunningLyingWaterLonelinessWasteStonesSandRunning AwayLighthouse
Book:Selected Works of Virginia Woolf
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