Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 24

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• If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now that in the time of the Pharaohs?

  Virginia Woolf

  Men, Average, Civilization

  Virginia Woolf (2015). “To the Lighthouse”, p.33, Virginia Woolf

  8 Copy quote

• It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zigzagging to show us the true nature of life.

  Virginia Woolf

  Taken, Dancing, Down And

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2897, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Attachment, Play

  "A Room of One's Own". Essay by Virginia Woolf (Chapter 3, pp. 43-44), October 24, 1929.

  7 Copy quote

• One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

  Virginia Woolf

  Strong Women, Adversity, People

  Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  18 Copy quote

• There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'.

  Virginia Woolf

  Stars, Night, Clouds

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.46, Virginia Woolf

  4 Copy quote

• Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing.

  Virginia Woolf

  Eye, Green, Green Leaves

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.6, Virginia Woolf

  10 Copy quote

• Would there be trees if we didn't see them?

  Virginia Woolf

  Tree, Ifs

  Virginia Woolf (2002). “The Years”, p.144, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• She thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.

  Virginia Woolf

  Atheist, Sake, Blame

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.107, Broadview Press

  7 Copy quote

• One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats - and one always secretes too much jelly.

  Virginia Woolf

  People, Jelly, Too Much

  Letter to Margaret Llewelyn Davies, 4 July 1938

  31 Copy quote

• Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Reading, Form

  The Captain's Death Bed, 'Reading' (published 1950).

  4 Copy quote

• Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Aunt, Greatness

  Virginia Woolf, Andrew McNeillie (1986). “The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1925-1928”, Chatto & Windus

  5 Copy quote

• The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.

  Virginia Woolf

  Flames, Literature, World

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.859, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• She felt... how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach.

  Virginia Woolf

  Beach, Littles, Chaos

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.286, Wordsworth Editions

  5 Copy quote

• old emotions like old families have intermarried and have many connections.

  Virginia Woolf

  Connections, Emotion

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.3206, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• So I have to create the whole thing afresh for myself each time. Probably all writers now are in the same boat. It is the penalty we pay for breaking with tradition, and the solitude makes the writing more exciting though the being read less so. One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with ones words.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Sea, Solitude

  Virginia Woolf (1981). “Mrs. Dalloway”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

  9 Copy quote

• I will achieve in my life - Heaven grant that it be not long - some gigantic amalgamation between the two discrepancies so hideously apparent to me. Out of my suffering I will do it. I will knock. I will enter.

  Virginia Woolf

  Two, Long, Heaven

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.37, Virginia Woolf

  10 Copy quote

• What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with this extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was.

  Virginia Woolf

  Excitement, Mrs Dalloway, Said

  Virginia Woolf (1996). “Mrs Dalloway”, p.141, Wordsworth Editions

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• You have been in every way all that anyone could be.... If anybody could have saved me it would have been you.

  Virginia Woolf

  Way, Suicide Note, Saved

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “The Voyage Out”, p.5, Courier Corporation

  6 Copy quote

• Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

  Virginia Woolf

  Flower, Mrs Dalloway, Said

  Mrs. Dalloway pt. 1, sec. 1 (1925)

  16 Copy quote

• and even a tea party means apprehension, breakage

  Virginia Woolf

  Party, Mean, Tea

  Virginia Woolf (1983). “The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1931-1935”, Mariner Books

  9 Copy quote

• When the body escaped mutilation, seldom did the heart go to the grave unscarred.

  Virginia Woolf

  Heart, Body, Graves

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.772, Delphi Classics

  5 Copy quote

• Nothing shakes my opinion of a book. Nothing -- nothing. Only perhaps if it's the book of a young person -- or of a friend -- no, even so, I think myself infallible.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Thinking, Opinion

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4308, Delphi Classics

  5 Copy quote

• When she read just now to James, 'and there were numbers of soldiers with kettledrums and trumpets,' and his eyes darkened, she thought, why should they grow up, and lose all that?

  Virginia Woolf

  Growing Up, Grows, Loses

  "Selected Works of Virginia Woolf".

  5 Copy quote

• Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living?

  Virginia Woolf

  Goes On, Made, Dose

  Virginia Woolf, Michael H. Whitworth (2014). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.42, Oxford University Press, USA

  6 Copy quote

• In illness words seem to possess a mystic quality.

  Virginia Woolf

  Quality, Illness, Mystic

  Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.108, Oxford University Press

  6 Copy quote

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