Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 15

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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.

  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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• At one and the same time, therefore, society is everything and society is nothing. Society is the most powerful concoction in the world and society has no existence whatsoever

  Virginia Woolf

  Powerful, World, Most Powerful

  Virginia Woolf (1995). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.95, Wordsworth Editions

  5 Copy quote

• Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched—love for instance—we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next.

  Virginia Woolf

  Stories, Substance, Goes On

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1428, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me.

  Virginia Woolf

  Hurt, Hate, Men

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.587, Wordsworth Editions

  5 Copy quote

• We agreed that people are now afraid of the English language. He [T.S. Eliot] said it came of being bookish, but not reading books enough. One should read all styles thoroughly.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Reading, People

  8 Copy quote

• Young women... you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays by Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse?

  Virginia Woolf

  Women, Army, Blessing

  Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.146

  9 Copy quote

• There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea.

  Virginia Woolf

  Country, Intelligent, Men

  Virginia Woolf (1942). “The death of the moth: and other essays”

  10 Copy quote

• There is no stability in this world. Who is to say what meaning there is in anything? Who is to foretell the flight of a word? It is a balloon that sails over tree-tops. To speak of knowledge is futile. All is experiment and adventure. We are forever mixing ourselves with unknown quantities. What is to come? I know not. But, as I put down my glass I remember; I am engaged to be married. I am to dine with my friends tonight. I am Bernard.

  Virginia Woolf

  Adventure, Glasses, Tree

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.693, Wordsworth Editions

  12 Copy quote

• I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens.

  Virginia Woolf

  Weed, Women, Lying

  Virginia Woolf (2005). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.687, Wordsworth Editions

  9 Copy quote

• For we think back through our mothers if we are women.

  Virginia Woolf

  Mom, Mother, Thinking

  1929 A Room of One's Own, ch.4.

  8 Copy quote

• Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels for grown-up people.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, People, Imperfection

  1925 The Common Reader, 'George Eliot'.

  9 Copy quote

• As for 'drawing you out,' please believe I don't do such things deliberately, with an object -- It's only that I am, as a rule, far more interested in people than they are in me -- But it makes me a nuisance, I know: only an innocent nuisance.

  Virginia Woolf

  Believe, Drawing, People

  Virginia Woolf, Joanne Trautmann Banks (1977). “A change of perspective”, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• I have made up thousands of stories; I have filled innumerable notebooks with phrases to be used when I have found the true story, the one story to which all these phrases refer. But I have never yet found the story. And I begin to ask, Are there stories?

  Virginia Woolf

  Notebook, Phrases, Stories

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.137, Virginia Woolf

  8 Copy quote

• If behind the erratic gunfire of the press the author felt that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of people readingfor the love of reading, slowly and unprofessionally, and judging with great sympathy and yet with great severity, might this not improve the quality of his work? And if by our means books were to become stronger, richer, and more varied, that would be an end worth reaching.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Reading, Mean

  Georg Brand, Virginia Woolf, Koizumi Yakumo, Hernández Felisberto (2017). “ON READING: Le plaisir de lire”, p.43, Pieffe Edizioni via PublishDrive

  6 Copy quote

• King old ladies assure us that cats are often the best judges of character. A cat will always to to a good man, they say.

  Virginia Woolf

  Kings, Character, Cat

  7 Copy quote

• The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness

  Virginia Woolf

  Sleep, Night, Sea

  Virginia Woolf (2015). “To the Lighthouse”, p.112, Virginia Woolf

  8 Copy quote

• Waves of hands, hesitations at street corners, someone dropping a cigarette into the gutter-all are stories. But which is the true story? That I do not know. Hence I keep my phrases hung like clothes in a cupboard, waiting for some one to wear them. Thus waiting, thus speculating, making this note and then an· other I do not cling to life. I shall be brushed like a bee from a sunflower. My philosophy, always accumulating, welling up moment by moment, runs like quicksilver a dozen ways at once.

  Virginia Woolf

  Running, Philosophy, Hands

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1411, Delphi Classics

  136 Copy quote

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