Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 19

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• A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.

  Virginia Woolf

  Running, Women, Mean

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1241, Delphi Classics

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• Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

  Virginia Woolf

  Thinking, Years, Voice

  Virginia Woolf (2015). “A Room of One's Own (Annotated)”, p.65, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• But what is more to the point is my belief that the habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses and the stumbles.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Eye, Practice

  Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.25, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems.

  Virginia Woolf

  Fiction, Problem, Unsolved Problems

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.565, Wordsworth Editions

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• Women alone stir my imagination.

  Virginia Woolf

  Imagination, My Imagination

  Virginia Woolf (2014). “Three Guineas (Annotated)”, p.66, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Voice, Secret

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.306, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Quality, Literature

  1925 The Common Reader, 'The Modern Essay'.

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• The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments.

  Virginia Woolf

  Eye, Writing, Practice

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• The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

  Virginia Woolf

  Life, Happiness, Independent

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2280, Delphi Classics

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• Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary, and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.

  Virginia Woolf

  Expression, Giving, Sound

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

  Virginia Woolf

  World, Mrs Dalloway, Raised

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.14, Broadview Press

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• The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it.

  Virginia Woolf

  Years, Adequate, Strange

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.70, Wordsworth Editions

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• For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Judging, Habit

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.612, Wordsworth Editions

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• This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

  Virginia Woolf

  Courage, Mean, Thinking

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.59, Lulu Press, Inc

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• London perpetually attracts, stimulates, gives me a play and a story and a poem, without any trouble, save that of moving my legs through the streets... To walk alone through London is the greatest rest.

  Virginia Woolf

  Moving, Play, Giving

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• for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge

  Virginia Woolf

  Men, Unity, Tablets

  Virginia Woolf (2006). “To the Lighthouse”, p.92, OUP Oxford

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• Reading [poetry], you know, is rather like opening the door to a horde of rebels who swarm out attacking one in twenty places at once - hit, roused, scraped, bared, swung through the air, so that life seems to flash by; then again blinded, knocked on the head - all of which are agreeable sensations for a reader (since nothing is more dismal than to open the door and get no response).

  Virginia Woolf

  Reading, Air, Doors

  Virginia Woolf (2017). “The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Volume 5: 1929 - 1932”, p.298, Random House

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• You would get longer livelier and more frequent letters from me, if it weren't for the Christian religion. How that bell tolling at the end of the garden, dum dum, dum dum, annoys me! Why is Christianity so insistent and so sad?

  Virginia Woolf

  Christian, Garden, Bells

  Virginia Woolf (1975). “The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1932-1935”

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• Rhoda comes now, having slipped in while we were not looking. She must have made a tortuous course, taking cover now behind a waiter, now behind some ornamental pillar, so as to put off as long as possible the shock of recognition, so as to be secure for one more moment to rock her petals in her basin. We wake her. We torture her. She dreads us, she despises us, yet she comes cringing to our sides because for al our cruelty there is always some name, some face which sheds a radiance, which lights up her pavements and makes it possible for her to replenish her dreams.

  Virginia Woolf

  Dream, Light, Rocks

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• Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.

  Virginia Woolf

  Cat, Men, Surfing

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

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• Her life was a tissue of vanity and deceit.

  Virginia Woolf

  Lying, Vanity, Deceit

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.148, Broadview Press

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• Lord, how tired one gets of one's own writing.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Tired, Lord

  Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.189, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I was lying in bed this morning and saying to myself, 'the remarkable thing about Ethel is her stupendous self-satisfaction' when in came your letter to confirm this profound psychological observation. How delighted I was!

  Virginia Woolf

  Morning, Lying, Self

  Virginia Woolf (1975). “The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1932-1935”

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• Oh, I am in love with life!

  Virginia Woolf

  Love Life

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.47, ShandonPress

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• Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That was how Shakespeare wrote, I thought, looking at Antony and Cleopatra; and when people compare Shakespeare and Jane Austen, they may mean that the minds of both had consumed all impediments; and for that reason we do not know Jane Austen and we do not know Shakespeare, and for that reason Jane Austen pervades every word that she wrote, and so does Shakespeare.

  Virginia Woolf

  Hate, Writing, Mean

  Virginia Woolf (2015). “A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas”, p.111, OUP Oxford

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