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Quote by Virginia Woolf

“Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today -- that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past.”

Quote by Virginia Woolf

Author

British modernist writer, known for her unique narrative techniques and profound portrayal of female experience. Her works include 'To the Lighthouse' and 'Mrs. Dalloway'. more

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“Madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does.”

Writing Doe Stills I Can Madness Mere Finals Sanity Terrific Lava

Book:The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1931

Source: The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1931

“Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.”

“The world has raised its whip; where will it descend?”

World Raised Whips Mrs Dalloway

Book:Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition

Source: Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition

“Nothing shakes my opinion of a book. Nothing -- nothing. Only perhaps if it's the book of a young person -- or of a friend -- no, even so, I think myself infallible.”

Ifs Thinking Persons Book Young Opinion Shakes Infallible

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)

“The compensation of growing old ... was simply this; that the passion remains as strong as ever, but one has gained -- at last! -- the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence -- the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.”

Light Lasts Passion Strong Existence Growing Remains Add Rounds Supreme Compensation Growing Old Flavour Mrs Dalloway

Book:Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition

Source: Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition

“Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes. Any help we can give you must be different from that you can give yourselves, and perhaps the value of that help may lie in the fact of that difference.”

World Giving May Different Facts Helping Eye Lying Values Differences

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)

“The artist after all is a solitary being.”

Artist Solitary

Book:Collected essays

Source: Collected essays

“Once you begin to take yourself seriously as a leader or as a follower, as a modern or as a conservative, then you become a self-conscious, biting, and scratching little animal whose work is not of the slightest value or importance to anybody.”

Littles Self Values Animal Leader Modern Conscious Importance Conservative Followers Self Conscious Biting

Book:The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1932

Source: The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1932

“I must try to set aside half an hour in some part of my day, and consecrate it to diary writing. Give it a name and a place, and then perhaps, such is the human mind, I shall come to think it a duty, and disregard other duties for it.”

Thinking Giving Writing Trying Mind Humans Names Hours Half Duty Human Mind Diaries Disregard

Author:Virginia Woolf

“I like the copious, shapeless, warm, not so very clever, but extremely easy and rather coarse aspect of things; the talk of men in clubs and public-houses; of miners half naked in drawers the forthright, perfectly unassuming, and without end in view except dinner, love, money and getting along tolerably; that which is without great hopes, ideals, or anything of that kind; what is unassuming except to make a tolerably, good job of it. I like all that.”

Source: Selected Works of Virginia Woolf