Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 14

Quotes about:

Adventure Affairs Age Aging Animals Art Austen

To communicate is our chief business; society and friendship our chief delights; and reading, not to acquire knowledge, not to earn a living, but to extend our intercourse beyond our own time and province.

Virginia Woolf

Reading, Delight, Chiefs

Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.63, Lulu Press, Inc

4 Copy quote
more and more I come to loathe any dominion of one over another; any leadership, any imposition of the will.

Virginia Woolf

Power, Dominion, Imposition

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4295, Delphi Classics

5 Copy quote
But it is just when opinions universally prevail and we have added lip service to their authority that we become sometimes most keenly conscious that we do not believe a word that we are saying.

Virginia Woolf

Believe, Lips, Opinion

Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.187, Lulu Press, Inc

5 Copy quote
For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?

Virginia Woolf

Years, Mind, Body

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.834, Wordsworth Editions

52 Copy quote
Of the rest some we know to be dead though they walk among us; some are not yet born though they go through the forms of life; others are hundreds of years old though they call themselves thirty-six.

Virginia Woolf

Years, Six, Form

"Orlando: A Biography".

10 Copy quote
I have sometimes dreamt ... that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards -- their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble -- the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.

Virginia Woolf

Book, Reading, Names

Virginia Woolf (1972). “Collected essays”

9 Copy quote
The waves broke and spread their waters swiftly over the shore. One after another they massed themselves and fell; the spray tossed itself back with the energy of their fall. The waves were steeped deep-blue save for a pattern of diamond-pointed light on their backs which rippled as the backs of great horses ripple with muscles as they move. The waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great beast stamping.

Virginia Woolf

Horse, Moving, Fall

Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.109, Virginia Woolf

8 Copy quote
For there is a virtue in truth; it has an almost mystic power. Like radium, it seems to give off forever and ever grains of energy, atoms of light.

Virginia Woolf

Truth, Light, Giving

Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.95, Oxford University Press

4 Copy quote
If people are highly successful in their profession they lose their senses. Sight goes. They have no time to look at pictures. Sound goes. They have no time to listen to music. Speech goes. They have no time for conversation. They lose their sense of proportion.

Virginia Woolf

Success, Sight, People

Virginia Woolf (2005). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.835, Wordsworth Editions

8 Copy quote
Writing is a divine art, and the more I write and read the more I love it.

Virginia Woolf

Art, Writing, Divine

Virginia Woolf (1975). “The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1888-1912 (Virginia Stephen)”, Harcourt on Demand

9 Copy quote
I feel that I have had a blow; but it is not, as I thought as a child, simply a blow from an enemy hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life; it is or will become a revelation of some order; it is a token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together.

Virginia Woolf

Hurt, Pain, Children

Virginia Woolf, Jeanne Schulkind (1976). “Moments of being: unpublished autobiographical writings”, Sussex University Press

9 Copy quote
Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body.

Virginia Woolf

Fall, Doors, Feet

Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.30, Virginia Woolf

9 Copy quote
Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall.

Virginia Woolf

Fall, Order, Mind

Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.122, Lulu Press, Inc

5 Copy quote
At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.

Virginia Woolf

Time, Age, Essentials

Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.134, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

16 Copy quote
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.

Virginia Woolf

Real, People, Laughing

Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Collected Novels of Virginia Woolf - Volume I - The Years, The Waves”, p.26, Read Books Ltd

14 Copy quote
if newspapers were written by people whose sole object in writing was to tell the truth about politics and the truth about art we should not believe in war, and we should believe in art.

Virginia Woolf

Art, War, Believe

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.853, Wordsworth Editions

7 Copy quote
On or about December 1910, human character changed.

Virginia Woolf

Character, December, Changed

Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.38, Oxford University Press

5 Copy quote
A million candles burnt in him without his being at the trouble of lighting a single one

Virginia Woolf

Trouble, Lighting, Candle

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.458, Wordsworth Editions

6 Copy quote
By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream

Virginia Woolf

Dream, Travel, Book

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.630, Wordsworth Editions

7 Copy quote
We all indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it comes to saying, even to someone opposite, what we think, then how little we are able to convey! The phantom is through the mind and out of the window before we can lay salt on

Virginia Woolf

Thinking, Opposites, Indulge In

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2279, Delphi Classics

4 Copy quote
One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that.

Virginia Woolf

Children, Animal, Vanity

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.185, Wordsworth Editions

6 Copy quote
It is equally vain,” she thought, “for you to think you can protect me, or for me to think I can worship you. The light of truth beats upon us without shadow, and the light of truth is damnably unbecoming to us both.

Virginia Woolf

Thinking, Light, Worship You

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.498, Wordsworth Editions

6 Copy quote
Romantic Love is only an Illusion. A story one makes up in One's Mind about Another Person.

Virginia Woolf

Romantic Love, Love Is, Mind

7 Copy quote
The interest in life does not lie in what people do, nor even in their relations to each other, but largely in the power to communicate with a third party, antagonistic, enigmatic, yet perhaps persuadable, which one may call life in general.

Virginia Woolf

Life, Lying, Party

1925 The Common Reader, 'On Not Knowing Greek'.

65 Copy quote
The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye, that opened suddenly, and softly in the evening. Now— James looked at the Lighthouse. He could see the white-washed rocks; the tower, stark and straight; he could see that it was barred with black and white; he could see windows in it; he could even see washing spread on the rocks to dry. So that was the Lighthouse, was it? No, the other was also the Lighthouse. For nothing was simply one thing. The other Lighthouse was true too.

Virginia Woolf

Eye, Black And White, Rocks

26 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Florence Nightingale

Vita Sackville-West

Ernest Hemingway

Charles Dickens

Virginia Woolf

Follow

Born: January 25, 1882
Died: March 28, 1941
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

Popular Topics