Home / Quotes / Quote by Virginia Woolf

Quote by Virginia Woolf

“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.”

Quote by Virginia Woolf

Book:The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1932

Work

The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1932

This book is a compilation of Virginia Woolf's essays written between 1929 and 1932, showcasing her thoughts on various subjects including literature, art, and social issues. more

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

You May Also Like

“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

“Lines slip easily down the accustomed grooves. The old designs are copied so glibly that we are half inclined to think them original, save for that very glibness.”

Thinking Lines Half Design Originals Slips Accustomed Groove

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)

“But the novels of women were not affected only by the necessarily narrow range of the writer's experience. They showed, at least in the nineteenth century, another characteristic which may be traced to the writer's sex. In Middlemarch and in Jane Eyre we are conscious not merely of the writer's character, as we are conscious of the character of Charles Dickens, but we are conscious of a woman's presence of someone resenting the treatment of her sex and pleading for its rights.”

May Character Sex Novel Rights Century Conscious Range Characteristics Treatment Affected Jane Nineteenth Century Dickens Pleading Middlemarch

Book:Selected essays

Source: Selected essays

“Happily, at forty-six I still feel as experimental and on the verge of getting at the truth as ever.”

Feels Stills Six Forty Verge

Book:A moment's liberty: the shorter diary

Source: A moment's liberty: the shorter diary

“A dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However moribund, it is not without effect for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences.”

“Do they still call it infatuation? That magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing there trembling? Whatever they call it, it leaps over anything, takes the biggest chair, the largest slice, rules the ground wherever it walks, from a mansion to a swamp, and its selfishness is its beauty.... People with no imagination feed it with sex -- the clown of love. They don't know the real kinds, the better kinds, where losses are cut and everybody benefits. It takes a certain intelligence to love like that -- softly, without props.”

“In order to be as free as I possibly can, in my own imagination, I can't take positions that are closed. Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it, to open doors, sometimes, not even closing the book -- leaving the endings open for reinterpretation, revisitation, a little ambiguity.”

World Writing Littles Has Beens I Can Book Sometimes Done Order Imagination My Own Doors Position Leaving Closing Ambiguity Articulation Reinterpretation

Author:Toni Morrison

“You need intelligence, and you need to look. You need a gaze, a wide gaze, penetrating and roving - thats what's useful for art.”

Needs Looks Art Wide Roving

Author:Toni Morrison

“I remember a very important lesson that my father gave me when I was twelve or thirteen. He said, "You know, today I welded a perfect seam and I signed my name to it." And I said, "But, Daddy, no one's going to see it!" And he said, "Yeah, but I know it's there." So when I was working in kitchens, I did good work.”

Knows Said Important Today Remember Father Names Perfect Lessons Yeah Kitchen Twelve Good Work Daddy Thirteen Important Lessons

Author:Toni Morrison