Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 27

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For women live much more in the past...they attach themselves to places.

Virginia Woolf

Past, Mrs Dalloway

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Happily, at forty-six I still feel as experimental and on the verge of getting at the truth as ever.

Virginia Woolf

Six, Feels, Forty

Virginia Woolf (1990). “A moment's liberty: the shorter diary”, Vintage

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There are no teachers, saints, prophets, good people, but the artists.

Virginia Woolf

Teacher, Artist, People

Virginia Woolf (1976). “The question of things happening”, Vintage

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About here, she thought, dabbling her fingers in the water, a ship had sunk, and she muttered, dreamily half asleep, how we perished, each alone.

Virginia Woolf

Water, Half, Ships

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Safe! safe! safe!' the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry 'Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.

Virginia Woolf

Happiness, Heart, Light

Virginia Woolf (2015). “Monday or Tuesday”, p.5, Virginia Woolf

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So that is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman looking at a girl throwing a ball

Virginia Woolf

Girl, Men, Balls

To the Lighthouse (1927) pt. 1, ch. 13

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The spring without a leaf to toss, bare and bright like a virgin fierce in her chastity, scornful in her purity, was laid out on fields wide-eyed and watchful and entirely careless of what was done or thought by the beholders.

Virginia Woolf

Spring, Done, Toss

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.341, Wordsworth Editions

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In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows.

Virginia Woolf

Shadow, Life Is, Embrace

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.766, Delphi Classics

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Who would not spout the family teapot in order to talk with Keats for an hour about poetry, or with Jane Austen about the art of fiction?

Virginia Woolf

Art, Order, Fiction

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

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The large shiny black forehead of the first whale was no more than two yards from us when it sank beneath the surface of the water, then we saw the huge blue-black bulk glide quietly under the raft right beneath our feet. It lay there for some time, dark and motionless, and we held our breath as we looked down on the gigantic curved back of a mammal a good deal longer than the raft.

Virginia Woolf

Time, Dark, Blue

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The grey nurse resumed her knitting as Peter Walsh, on the hot seat beside her, began snoring. In her grey dress, moving her hands indefatigably yet quietly, she seemed like the champion of the rights of sleepers, like one of those spectral presences which rise in twilight in woods made of sky and branches. The solitary traveler, haunter of lanes, disturber of ferns, and devastator of hemlock plants, looking up, suddenly sees the giant figure at the end of the ride.

Virginia Woolf

Twilight, Moving, Knitting

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.56, Broadview Press

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Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, halfway down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waves swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad.

Virginia Woolf

Darkness, Black, Tears

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How then did it work out, all this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it is liking one felt, or disliking?

Virginia Woolf

Thinking, People, Work Out

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1004, Delphi Classics

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Wind and storm colored July. Also, in the middle, cadaverous, awful, lay the grey puddle in the courtyard, when holding an envelope in my hand, I carried a message. I came to the puddle. I could not cross it. Identity failed me. We are nothing, I said, and fell. I was blown like a feather. I was wafted down tunnels. Then very gingerly, I pushed my foot across. I laid my hand against a brick wall. I returned very painfully, drawing myself back into my body over the grey, cadaverous space of the puddle. This is life then to which I am committed.

Virginia Woolf

Wall, Tunnels, July

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But he could not taste, he could not feel. In the teashop among the tables and the chattering waiters the appalling fear came over him- he could not feel. He could reason; he could read, Dante for example, quite easily…he could add up his bill; his brain was perfect; it must be the fault of the world then- that he could not feel.

Virginia Woolf

Perfect, Brain, Example

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.88, Broadview Press

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Surely it was time someone invented a new plot, or that the author came out from the bushes.

Virginia Woolf

Time, Plot

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1933, Delphi Classics

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So fine was the morning except for a streak of wind here and there that the sea and sky looked all one fabric, as if sails were stuck high up in the sky, or the clouds had dropped down into the sea.

Virginia Woolf

Morning, Clouds, Wind

Virginia Woolf (2006). “To the Lighthouse”, p.27, OUP Oxford

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I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on pavement.

Virginia Woolf

Feet, Long, Broken

Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.176, Virginia Woolf

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Biography is to give a man some kind of shape after his death.

Virginia Woolf

Death, Men, Giving

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Then may I tell you that the very next words I read were these – ‘Chloe liked Olivia…’ Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women.

Virginia Woolf

Olivia, Chloe, May

Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.106

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And it was awfully strange, he thought, how she still had the power, as she came tinkling, rustling, still had the power as she came across the room, to make the moon, which he detested, rise at Bourton on the terrace in the summer sky.

Virginia Woolf

Summer, Moon, Sky

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.82, Broadview Press

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There is something I want-something I have come to get, and she fell deeper and deeper without knowing quite what it was, with her eyes closed.

Virginia Woolf

Eye, Want Something, Knowing

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1069, Delphi Classics

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They all dreamt of each other that night, as was natural, considering how thin the partitions were between them, and how strangely they had been lifted off the earth to sit next each other in mid-ocean, and see every detail of each others' faces, and hear whatever they chanced to say.

Virginia Woolf

Ocean, Night, Details

Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Voyage Out”, p.57, Virginia Woolf

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No, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low.

Virginia Woolf

Moments, Sideways, Mark

Virginia Woolf (2016). “To the Lighthouse”, p.166, Tyché

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Of course, literature is the only spiritual and humane career. Even painting tends to dumness, and music turns people erotic, whereas the more you write the nicer you become.

Virginia Woolf

Spiritual, Book, Writing

Virginia Woolf (1991). “Paper Darts”

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

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