Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 28

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All looked distant and peaceful and strange. The shore seemed refined, far away, unreal. Already the little distance they had sailed had put them far from it and given it the changed look, the composed look, of something receding in which one has no longer any part.

Virginia Woolf

Distance, Peaceful, Looks

Virginia Woolf (2015). “To the Lighthouse”, p.128, Virginia Woolf

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He began to search among the infinite series of impressions which time had laid down, leaf upon leaf, fold upon fold softly, incessantly upon his brain; among scents, sounds; voices, harsh, hollow, sweet; and lights passing, and brooms tapping; and the wash and hush of the sea.

Virginia Woolf

Sweet, Memories, Voice

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.365, Wordsworth Editions

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She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell and she had felt that was true of life — one scratched on the wall.

Virginia Woolf

Wall, Men, Cells

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.192, Broadview Press

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The immense success of our life is, I think, that our treasure is hid away; or rather in such common things that nothing can touch it.

Virginia Woolf

Thinking, Treasure, Common

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

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O how blessed it would be never to marry, or grow old; but to spend one's life innocently and indifferently among the trees and rivers which alone can keep one cool and childlike in the midst of the troubles of the world!

Virginia Woolf

Blessed, Rivers, Childhood

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1973, Delphi Classics

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The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder.

Virginia Woolf

Children, Book, Reading

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.123, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down. The sun sharpended the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a fingerprint of a shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The birds sang their blank melody outside.

Virginia Woolf

Wall, Garden, Light

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It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years?... What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.

Virginia Woolf

Hero, Men, Thinking

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1012, Delphi Classics

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What could be more serious than the love of man for woman, what more commanding, more impressive, bearing in its bosom the seeds of death; at the same time these lovers, these people entering into illusion glittering eyed, must be danced round with mockery, decorated with garlands.

Virginia Woolf

Love, Men, People

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.319, Wordsworth Editions

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But I beneath a rougher sea, And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he.

Virginia Woolf

Sea, Deeper

Virginia Woolf (1982). “To the Lighthouse: The Original Holograph Draft”

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Life's bare as a bone.

Virginia Woolf

Life, Bones

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After that, how unbelievable death was! - that is must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all.

Virginia Woolf

World, Mrs Dalloway, Ends

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.934, Delphi Classics

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Oh and I thought, as i was dressing, how interesting it would be to describe the approach of age, and the gradual coming of death. As people describe love. To note every symptom of failure: but why failure? To treat age as an experience that is different from the others; and to detect every one of the gradual stages towards death which is a tremendous experience, an not as unconscious, at least in its approaches, as death is.

Virginia Woolf

Love, People, Interesting

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4523, Delphi Classics

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They say the sky is the same everywhere. Travellers, the shipwrecked, exiles, and the dying draw comfort from the thought.

Virginia Woolf

Travel, Sky, Dying

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.27, Wordsworth Editions

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Venerable are letters, infinitely brave, forlorn, and lost.

Virginia Woolf

Brave, Letters, Lost

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.783, Delphi Classics

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Ruin, weariness, death, perpetually death, stand grimly to confront the other presence of Elizabethan drama which is life: life compact of frigates, fir trees and ivory, of dolphins and the juice of July flowers, of the milk of unicorns and panthers’ breath, of ropes of pearl, brains of peacocks and Cretan wine.

Virginia Woolf

Drama, Flower, Wine

Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.56, Lulu Press, Inc

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For pain words are lacking. There should be cries, cracks, fissures, whiteness passing over chintz covers, interference with the sense of time, of space ; the sense also of extreme fixity in passing objects ; and sounds very remote and then very close ; flesh being gashed and blood sparting, a joint suddenly twisted - beneath all of which appears something very important, yet remote, to be just held in solitude.” — Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Virginia Woolf

Pain, Virginia, Blood

Virginia Woolf (2005). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.763, Wordsworth Editions

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I read the book of Job last night, I don't think God comes out well in it.

Virginia Woolf

Witty, Jobs, Book

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

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... I doubt the capacity of the human animal for being dignified in ceremony.

Virginia Woolf

Animal, Doubt, Capacity

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4383, Delphi Classics

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Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely? All this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?

Virginia Woolf

Believe, Goes On, Matter

Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.9, Broadview Press

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What greater delight and wonder can there be than to leave the straight lines of personality and deviate into these footpaths that lead beneath brambles and thick tree trunks into the heart of the forest where live those wild beasts, our fellow men? That is true: to escape is the greatest of pleasures; street haunting in winter the greatest of adventures.

Virginia Woolf

Heart, Adventure, Winter

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2919, Delphi Classics

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loveliness is infernally sad.

Virginia Woolf

Beauty, Loveliness

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.748, Delphi Classics

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... the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected ... the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and servilities of the other.

Virginia Woolf

World, Tyranny, Connected

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2851, Delphi Classics

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Books should stand on their own feet ... If they need shoring up by a preface here, an introduction there, they have no more right to exist than a table that needs a wad of paper under one leg in order to stand steady.

Virginia Woolf

Book, Feet, Order

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.3591, Delphi Classics

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It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of woman's life is that.

Virginia Woolf

Sex, Thinking, Fiction

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.614, Wordsworth Editions

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

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