Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 29

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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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If this were the time or the place to uphold a paradox, I am half inclined to state that Norfolk is one of the most beautiful of counties.

Virginia Woolf

Beautiful, Half, Paradox

Virginia Woolf, Jan Morris (1993). “Travels with Virginia Woolf”, Random House (UK)

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Nothing is stronger than the position of the dead among the living.

Virginia Woolf

Stronger, Position

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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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I press to my centre, and find there is something there.

Virginia Woolf

Centre, Presses

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Disastrous would have been the result if a fire or a death had suddenly demanded something heroic of human nature, but tragedies come in the hungry hours.

Virginia Woolf

Fire, Tragedy, Heroic

Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Voyage Out”, p.140, Virginia Woolf

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But the close withdrew: the hand softened. It was over-- the moment.

Virginia Woolf

Hands, Moments

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For it is probable that when people talk aloud, the selves (of which there may be more than two thousand) are conscious of disserverment, and are trying to communicate but when communication is established there is nothing more to be said.

Virginia Woolf

Communication, Self, Two

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Yet Byron never made tea as you do, who fill the pot so that when you put the lid on the tea spills over. There is a brown pool on the table--it is running among your books and papers. Now you mop it up, clumsily, with your pocket-hankerchief. You then stuff your hankerchief back into your pocket--that is not Byron; that is so essentially you that if I think of you in twenty years' time, when we are both famous, gouty and intolerable, it will be by that scene: and if you are dead, I shall weep.

Virginia Woolf

Running, Book, Thinking

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For the young people could not talk. And why should they? Shout, embrace, swing, be up at dawn.

Virginia Woolf

Swings, People, Dawn

Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.972, Delphi Classics

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He lay on his chair with his hands clasped above his paunch not reading, or sleeping, but basking like a creature gorged with existence.

Virginia Woolf

Reading, Sleep, Hands

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

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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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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 Sasha who after all had no English blood in her but was from Russia where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden, and sentences often left unfinished from doubt as to how best to end them.

Virginia Woolf

Nature, Sunset, Russia

"Orlando (Annotated): A Biography".

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She began framing the words of her telegram into a senseless singsong; so that several park keepers looked at her with suspicion and were only brought to a favourable opinion of her sanity by noticing the pearl necklace which she wore.

Virginia Woolf

Singing, Necklaces, Pearls

"Orlando (Annotated): A Biography".

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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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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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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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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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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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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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Now to sum it up,' said Bernard. 'Now to explain to you the meaning of my life. Since we do not know each other (though I met you once I think, on board a ship going to Africa), we can talk freely. The illusion is upon me that something adheres for a moment, has roundness, weight, depth, is completed. This, for the moment, seems to be my life. If it were possible, I would hand it you entire. I would break it off as one breaks off a bunch of grapes. I would say, "Take it. This is my life.

Virginia Woolf

Thinking, Break Off, Hands

Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.175, Virginia Woolf

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

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