Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 20

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• The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think.

  Virginia Woolf

  Dark, Thinking, Best Things

  Virginia Woolf, Anne Olivier Bell (1977). “The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1915-1919”, Chatto & Windus

  7 Copy quote

• There is no doubt in my mind, that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice.

  Virginia Woolf

  Voice, Doubt, Mind

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4325, Delphi Classics

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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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• 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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• 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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• scarcely a human being in the course of history has fallen to a woman's rifle; the vast majority of birds and beasts have been killed by you, not by us. Obviously there is for you some glory, some necessity, some satisfaction in fighting which we have never felt or enjoyed.

  Virginia Woolf

  Fighting, Bird, Satisfaction

  Virginia Woolf (2014). “Three Guineas (Annotated)”, p.81, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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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• 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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• She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.

  Virginia Woolf

  Happiness, Taxi Cabs, Sea

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.132, Wordsworth Editions

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• Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today -- that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past.

  Virginia Woolf

  Marriage, Memories, Writing

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• Mr. Beerbohm in his way is perfect ... He has brought personality into literature, not unconsciously and impurely, but so consciously and purely that we do not know whether there is any relation between Max the essayist and Mr. Beerbohm the man. We only know that the spirit of personality permeates every word that he writes ... He is without doubt the prince of his profession.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Men, Perfect

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• But I think I’m coloured by my own wishes, & experimental mood.

  Virginia Woolf

  Thinking, Wish, Mood

  Virginia Woolf (1978). “The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1920-1924”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall

  Virginia Woolf

  Fall, Heart, Sea

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.39, Broadview Press

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• I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again - as I always am when I write.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Thinking, Mood

  Virginia Woolf (1980). “The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1925-1930”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.

  Virginia Woolf

  Luck, World, May

  Virginia Woolf (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.311, OUP Oxford

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• So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Sacrifice, Hair

  Virginia Woolf, Hermione Lee (2000). “A room of one's own and other essays”

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• Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.

  Virginia Woolf

  Nature, Tears, Together

  Virginia Woolf, Michael H. Whitworth (2014). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.13, Oxford University Press, USA

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• She fell into a deep pool of sticky water, which eventually closed over her head. She saw nothing and heard nothing but a faint booming sound, which was the sound of the sea rolling over her head. While all her tormentors thought that she was dead, she was not dead, but curled up at the bottom of the sea.

  Virginia Woolf

  Sea, Water, Sound

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.299, Delphi Classics

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• If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or 'our' country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not share.

  Virginia Woolf

  Country, Sex, Fighting

  Three Guineas pt. 3 (1938)

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• There was a day when I liked writing letters -- it has gone. Unfortunately the passion for getting them remains.

  Virginia Woolf

  Passion, Writing, Gone

  Virginia Woolf (1975). “The letters of Virginia Woolf”

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• For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would come over her, If he were with me now what would he say? --some days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, without the old bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared for people; they came back in the middle of St. James's Park on a fine morning--indeed they did.

  Virginia Woolf

  Morning, Sight, Years

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Collected Novels of Virginia Woolf - Volume II - Between the Acts, Mrs Dalloway, Orlando”, p.290, Read Books Ltd

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• The English tourist in American literature wants above all things something different from what he has at home. For this reason the one American writer whom the English whole-heartedly admire is Walt Whitman. There, you will hear them say, is the real American undisguised. In the whole of English literature there is no figure which resembles his - among all our poetry none in the least comparable to Leaves of Grass

  Virginia Woolf

  Real, Home, Leaves Of Grass

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.3129, Delphi Classics

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• To be nothing - is that not, after all, the most satisfactory fact in the whole world?

  Virginia Woolf

  World, Facts, Whole

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• I [who] am perpetually making notes in the margin of my mind for some final statement.

  Virginia Woolf

  Mind, Finals, Notes

  Virginia Woolf (2005). “The Waves”, p.161, Collector's Library

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