“They said, 'Come to tea and let us comfort you.' But it is no good. One must be crucified on one's own private cross. It is a strange fact that a terrible pain in the heart can be interrupted by a little pain in the fourth toe of the right foot. I know that V. will not come across the garden from the lodge, & yet I look in that direction for her. I know that she is drowned & yet I listen for her to come in at the door. I know that it is the last page & yet I turn it over. There is no limit to one's stupidity and selfishness.” DeathGriefMemoryGrievingBereavementVirginia WoolfLeonard Woolf Author:Leonard Woolf
“Novels by serious writers of genius often eventually become best-sellers, but most contemporary best-sellers are written by second-class writers whose psychological brew contains a touch of naïvety, a touch of sentimentality, the story-telling gift, and a mysterious sympathy with the day-dreams of ordinary people.” WritingGeniusModernismVirginia WoolfBest SellersVita Sackville WestLeonard WoolfBloomsbury Group Author:Leonard Woolf
“Nothing matters. You get yourself into a state in which you imagine things which have no basis in reality... One begins for some reason to worry about something and, if one allows oneself to go on doing that, one gradually imagines all kinds of things. It is a kind of self-indulgence and one gets into a perpetual daydream. It is essential to stop this process and face the real world -- which is never so bad as all that.” PhilosophyBloomsburyLeonard WoolfBloomsbury Group Author:Leonard Woolf
“Leonard Woolf’s endurance of Virginia’s famous frigidity is, we must suppose after the fact, altogether to his credit. Their honeymoon did not bring the amelioration they had hoped for and it is incredibly innocent and moving to think of them discussing it with Vanessa. They wanted to know when she had first had an orgasm. She said she couldn’t remember but she knew she had been “sympathetic” from the age of two. Vita Sackville-West said about Virginia, “She dislikes the possessiveness and love of domination in men. In fact she dislikes the quality of masculinity.” Virginia WoolfLeonard WoolfVanessa BellVita Sacksville West Book:Seduction and Betrayal Source: Seduction and Betrayal
“It is never right for any individual or government to do any vast evil as a means to some hypothetical good.” WarPoliticsInternational RelationsBloomsburyLeonard WoolfBloomsbury Group Author:Leonard Woolf
“The mere fact that a very large number of people believe such a thing and that the world would be a better place if it were true, is no reason for believing that it is true.” ReligionBeliefBloomsburyLeonard WoolfBloomsbury Group Author:Leonard Woolf
“There is nothing to be said except about the sheer waste and futility of it all. It is the war all over again, when one is rung up to be told that Rupert was dead, or that one's brother was killed, and one knew that it was only to produce the kind of world we are living in now. Horrible.” WarWorld War IiWorld War IBloomsburyLeonard WoolfBloomsbury Group Author:Leonard Woolf
“The fact is, I find it extremely difficult to force myself to read old letters... Whenever one really knows the facts, one finds that what is accepted by contemporaries or posterity as the truth about them is so distorted or out of focus that it is not worth worrying about.” BloomsburyLeonard WoolfBloomsbury Group Author:Leonard Woolf
“I see clearly that I have achieved practically nothing.” LifeBloomsburyLeonard WoolfBloomsbury Group Author:Leonard Woolf
“Nothing matters, and everything matters.” BloomsburyLeonard WoolfBloomsbury Group Author:Leonard Woolf