Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 19

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For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping.

Virginia Woolf

Sports, Weed, Wind

Virginia Woolf (1996). “Mrs Dalloway”, p.117, Wordsworth Editions

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I am obsessed at nights with the idea of my own worthlessness, and if it were only to turn a light on to save my life I think I would not do it. These are the last footprints of a headache I suppose. Do you ever feel that? - like an old weed in a stream. What do you feel, lying in bed?

Virginia Woolf

Weed, Lying, Night

Virginia Woolf (1975). “The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1929-1931”

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Twice Flush had done his utmost to kill his enemy; twice he had failed. And why had he failed, he asked himself? Because he loved Miss Barrett. Looking up at her from under his eyebrows as she lay, severe and silent on the sofa, he knew that he must love her for ever. Things are not simple but complex. If he bit Mr. Browning he bit her too. Hatred is not hatred; hatred is also love.

Virginia Woolf

Simple, Eyebrows, Hatred

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Flush”, p.37, Lulu Press, Inc

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I am reading Henry James...and feel myself as one entombed in a block of smooth amber.

Virginia Woolf

Block, Reading, Amber

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With my cheek leant upon the window pane I like to fancy that I am pressing as closely as can be upon the massy wall of time, which is forever lifting and pulling and letting fresh spaces of life in upon us. May it be mine to taste the moment before it has spread itself over the rest of the world! Let me taste the newest and the freshest.

Virginia Woolf

Wall, Window Panes, Space

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1969, Delphi Classics

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Peter would think her sentimental. So she was. For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worth saying – what one felt. Cleverness was silly. One must say simply what one felt.

Virginia Woolf

Silly, Thinking, Sentimental

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.191, Broadview Press

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My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child–wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry.

Virginia Woolf

Children, House, Anxiety

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4304, Delphi Classics

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I have a feeling I shall go mad. I cannot go on longer in these terrible times. I shan't recover this time. I hear voices and cannot concentrate on my work. I have fought against it but cannot fight any longer.

Virginia Woolf

Fighting, Voice, Mad

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It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.

Virginia Woolf

Determination, Book, Writing

Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.37, HMH

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...she took her hand and raised her brush. For a moment it stayed trembling in a painful but exciting ecstacy in the air. Where to begin?--that was the question at what point to make the first mark? One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves shape themselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but to the swimmer among them are divided by steep gulfs, and foaming crests. Still the risk must run; the mark made.

Virginia Woolf

Running, Simple, Air

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks, between her parents who stood by the lake, holding her life in her arms which, as she neared them, grew larger and larger in her arms, until it became a whole life, a complete life, which she put down by them and said, "This is what I have made of it! This!" And what had she made of it? What, indeed?

Virginia Woolf

Children, Lakes, Ducks

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.878, Delphi Classics

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The melancholy river bears us on. When the moon comes through the trailing willow boughs, I see your face, I hear your voice and the bird singing as we pass the osier bed. What are you whispering? Sorrow, sorrow. Joy, joy. Woven together, like reeds in moonlight.

Virginia Woolf

Moon, Voice, Rivers

Virginia Woolf (2015). “The String Quartet”, p.5, Booklassic

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She tapped on the window with her embossed hairbrush. They were too far off to hear. The drone of the trees was in their ears; the chirp of birds; other incidents of garden life, inaudible, invisible to her in the bedroom, absorbed them. Isolated on a green island, hedged about with snowdrops, laid with a counterpane of puckered silk, the innocent island floated under her window. Only George lagged behind.

Virginia Woolf

Garden, Islands, Bird

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.933, Wordsworth Editions

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

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