Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 19

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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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 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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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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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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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 weight of the world is on our shoulders, its vision is through our eyes; if we blink or look aside, or turn back to finger what Plato said or remember Napoleon and his conquests, we inflict on the world the injury of some obliquity. This is life.

Virginia Woolf

Plato, Eye, Vision

Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.123, Virginia Woolf

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The roar of the traffic, the passage of undifferentiated faces, this way and that way, drugs me into dreams; rubs the features from faces. People might walk through me. And what is this moment of time, this particular day in which I have found myself caught? The growl of traffic might be any uproar - forest trees or the roar of wild beasts. Time has whizzed back an inch or two on its reel; our short progress has been cancelled. I think also that our bodies are in truth naked. We are only lightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these pavements are shells, bones and silence.

Virginia Woolf

Dream, Thinking, Two

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.691, Wordsworth Editions

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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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No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes

Virginia Woolf

Believe, Passion, Men

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.178, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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

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