Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 25

Quotes about:

• There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay.... the essay must be pure--pure like water or pure like wine, but pure from dullness, deadness, and deposits of extraneous matter.

  Virginia Woolf

  Wine, Water, Literature

  Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.14, Oxford University Press

  6 Copy quote

• The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw. One must get out of life...one must become externalised; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one's character, living in the brain.

  Virginia Woolf

  Mistake, Reading, Writing

  6 Copy quote

• The word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.

  Virginia Woolf

  Sea, Genius, Dripping

  The Common Reader "Notes on an Elizabethan Play" (1925)

  7 Copy quote

• A learned man is a sedentary, concentrated solitary enthusiast, who searches through books to discover some particular grain of truth upon which he has set his heart. If the passion for reading conquers him, his gains dwindle and vanish between his fingers. A reader, on the other hand, must check the desire for learning at the outset; if knowledge sticks to him well and good, but to go in pursuit of it, to read on a system, to become a specialist or an authority, is very apt to kill what suits us to consider the more humane passion for pure and disinterested reading.

  Virginia Woolf

  Reading, Book, Passion

  Virginia Woolf, Andrew McNeillie (1986). “The Essays of Virginia Woolf: 1912-1918”, Harcourt

  6 Copy quote

• ... if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us to break her and bullyher, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.

  Virginia Woolf

  Art, Criticism, And Love

  Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.12, Oxford University Press

  6 Copy quote

• I got out this diary, & read as one always does read one's own writing, with a kind of guilty intensity.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Diaries, Kind

  "The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1915-1919".

  8 Copy quote

• So he was deserted. The whole world was clamouring: Kill yourself, kill yourself, for our sakes. But why should he kill himself for their sakes? Food was pleasant; the sun hot; and this killing oneself, how does one set about it, with a table knife, uglily, with floods of blood, - by sucking a gaspipe? He was too weak; he could scarcely raise his hand. Besides, now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know.

  Virginia Woolf

  Blood, Hands, Knives

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.92, Broadview Press

  6 Copy quote

• But our hatred is almost indistinguishable from our love.

  Virginia Woolf

  Hatred, Our Love

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.702, Wordsworth Editions

  6 Copy quote

• Different though the sexes are, they inter-mix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is very opposite of what it is above.

  Virginia Woolf

  Sex, Opposites, Clothes

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.207, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  13 Copy quote

• For such will be our ruin if you, in the immensity of your public abstractions, forget the private figure, or if we in the intensity of our private emotions forget the public world. Both houses will be ruined, the public and the private, the material and the spiritual, for they are inseparably connected.

  Virginia Woolf

  Spiritual, House, World

  Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.365

  10 Copy quote

• Let it be fact, one feels, or let it be fiction; the imagination will not serve under two masters simultaneously.

  Virginia Woolf

  Two, Imagination, Fiction

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.3718, Delphi Classics

  13 Copy quote

• Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them.

  Virginia Woolf

  Lying, May, Flow

  Virginia Woolf (2015). “A Room of One's Own (Annotated)”, p.4, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  6 Copy quote

• Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a room with someone, up went her back like a cat's; or she purred.

  Virginia Woolf

  Cat, Knowing, People

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

  6 Copy quote

• I cannot remember my past, my nose, or the colour of my eyes, or what my general opinion of myself is. Only in moments of emergency, at a crossing, at a kerb, the wish to preserve my body springs out and seizes me and stops me , here, before this omnibus. We insist, it seems, on living. Then again, indifference descends.

  Virginia Woolf

  Spring, Eye, Past

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.82, Virginia Woolf

  6 Copy quote

• When an arguer argues dispassionately he thinks only of the argument.

  Virginia Woolf

  Thinking, Arguing, Argument

  Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.43

  7 Copy quote

• Does housekeeping interest you at all? I think it really ought to be just as good as writing and I never see where the separation between the too comes in. At least if you must put books on one side and life on the other, each is a poor and bloodless thing; but my theory is that they mix indistinguishable.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Reading, Writing

  7 Copy quote

• Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Animal, Men

  Virginia Woolf (2015). “A Room of One's Own: And Three Guineas”, p.21, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Altogether, the task of estimating the length of human life is beyond our capacity, for directly we say that it is ages long, we are reminded that it is briefer than the fall of a rose leaf to the ground.

  Virginia Woolf

  Fall, Long, Rose

  "Orlando: A Biography".

  7 Copy quote

• If we didn't live venturously, plucking the wild goat by the beard, and trembling over precipices, we should never be depressed, I've no doubt; but already should be faded, fatalistic and aged.

  Virginia Woolf

  Adventure, Doubt, Goats

  Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.75, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  16 Copy quote

• As nobody can possibly tell me whether one's writing is bad or good, the only certain value is one's own pleasure. I am sure of that.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Pleasure, Certain

  Virginia Woolf, Joanne Trautmann Banks (1975). “The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1923-1928”, Harcourt on Demand

  7 Copy quote

• In the 18th century we knew how everything was done, but here I rise through the air, I listen to voices in America, I see men flying- but how is it done? I can't even begin to wonder. So my belief in magic returns.

  Virginia Woolf

  Men, Air, Voice

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.544, Wordsworth Editions

  6 Copy quote

• Clothes are but a symbol of something hid deep beneath.

  Virginia Woolf

  Clothes, Symbols

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.207, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

• The chief glory of a woman is not to be talked of, said Pericles, himself a much-talked-of-man.

  Virginia Woolf

  Inspirational, Motivational, Men

  Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.65

  7 Copy quote

• History is too much about wars; biography too much about great men.

  Virginia Woolf

  War, Men, History

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.630, Wordsworth Editions

  7 Copy quote

• The current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the politicians. Every day they tell us that we are a free people fighting to defend freedom. That is the current that has whirled the young airman up into the sky and keeps him circulating there among the clouds. Down here, with a roof to cover us and a gasmask handy, it is our business to puncture gasbags and discover the seeds of truth.

  Virginia Woolf

  War, Fighting, Clouds

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Collected Essays and Letters of Virginia Woolf - Including a Short Biography of the Author”, p.6, Read Books Ltd

  9 Copy quote

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