Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 31

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• Walden - all his books, indeed - are packed with subtle, conflicting, and very fruitful discoveries. They are not written to prove something in the end. They are written as the Indians turn down twigs to mark their path through the forest. He cuts his way through life as if no one had ever taken that road before, leaving these signs for those who come after, should they care to see which way he went.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Taken, Cutting

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

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• Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontes and George Eliot could no more have written than Shakespeare could have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and tamed the natural savagery of the tongue. For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

  Virginia Woolf

  Thinking, Years, Voice

  Virginia Woolf (1989). “A Room of One's Own”, p.79, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In fact, though their acquaintance had been so short, they had guessed, as always happens between lovers, everything of any importance about each other in two seconds at the utmost, and it now remained only to fill in such unimportant details as what they were called; where they lived; and whether they were beggars or people of substance.

  Virginia Woolf

  Two, People, Details

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1260, Delphi Classics

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• I’m not clear enough in the head to feel anything but varieties of dull anger and arrows of sadness.

  Virginia Woolf

  Sadness, Arrows, Dull

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• A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Mind, Excellence

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• Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

  Virginia Woolf

  People, Body, Crowds

  Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.49

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• She felt drawing further from her and further from her an Archduke, (she did not mind that) a fortune, (she did not mind that) the safety and circumstance of married life, (she did not mind that) but life she heard going from her, and a lover.

  Virginia Woolf

  Drawing, Safety, Mind

  Virginia Woolf (1990). “Orlando: A Biography”, Chatto & Windus

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• To love makes one solitary.

  Virginia Woolf

  Solitary

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.23, Broadview Press

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• and then he could not see her come into a room without a sense of the flowing of robes, of the flowering of blossoms, of the purple waves of the sea, of all things that are lovely and mutable on the surface but still and passionate in their heart.

  Virginia Woolf

  Heart, Sea, Purple

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.506, Delphi Classics

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• The root of things, what they were all afraid of saying, was that happiness is dirt cheap. You can have it for nothing. Beauty.

  Virginia Woolf

  Roots, Dirt

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2101, Delphi Classics

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• Needless to say, the business of living interferes with the solitude so needed for any work of the imagination. Here's what Virginia Woolf said in her diary about the sticky issue: "I've shirked two parties, and another Frenchman, and buying a hat, and tea with Hilda Trevelyan, for I really can't combine all this with keeping all my imaginary people going.

  Virginia Woolf

  Party, Virginia, Two

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• She was like a crinkled poppy; with the desire to drink dry dust.

  Virginia Woolf

  Dust, Desire, Dry

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.757, Wordsworth Editions

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• Love ought to stop on both sides, don’t you think, simultaneously?’ He spoke without any stress on the words, so as not to wake the sleepers. ‘But it won’t - that’s the devil,’ he added in the same undertone.

  Virginia Woolf

  Stress, Thinking, Devil

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1697, Delphi Classics

  6 Copy quote

• When I am grown up I shall carry a notebook—a fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I shall enter my phrases.

  Virginia Woolf

  Notebook, Phrases, Pages

  Virginia Woolf (2005). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.654, Wordsworth Editions

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• Like most uneducated Englishwomen, I like reading--I like reading books in the bulk.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Reading, Reading Books

  Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.142

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• And in me too the wave rises. It swells; it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new desire, something rising beneath me like the proud horse whose rider first spurs and then pulls him back. What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us, you whom I ride now, as we stand pawing this stretch of pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man's, like Percival's, when he galloped in India. I strike spurs into my horse. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!

  Virginia Woolf

  Horse, Men, Hair

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.779, Wordsworth Editions

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• So that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again.

  Virginia Woolf

  Tattoo, Beach, Ocean

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “To the Lighthouse”, p.15, Virginia Woolf

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• Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone.

  Virginia Woolf

  Views, Orlando, Solitary

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.82, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I am all the time thinking about poetry and fiction and you.

  Virginia Woolf

  Love, Thinking, Fiction

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• But when the door shuts on us, all that vanishes. The shell-like covering which our souls have excreted to house themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken, and there is left of all these wrinkles and roughnesses a central oyster of perceptiveness, an enormous eye. How beautiful a street is in winter!

  Virginia Woolf

  Beautiful, Eye, Winter

  Virginia Woolf (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.303, OUP Oxford

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• But what a little I can get down into my pen of what is so vivid to my eyes, and not only to my eyes; also to some nervous fibre, or fanlike membrane in my species.

  Virginia Woolf

  Eye, Littles, Vivid

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4389, Delphi Classics

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• Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it.

  Virginia Woolf

  Running, Tombstone, Cutting

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2645, Delphi Classics

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• The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it.

  Virginia Woolf

  Ocean, Wrinkles, Sea

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.3, Virginia Woolf

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• To survive, each sentence must have, at its heart, a little spark of fire, and this, whatever the risk, the novelist must pluck with his own hands from the blaze.

  Virginia Woolf

  Heart, Fire, Hands

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.3635, Delphi Classics

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• No one would think of bringing a dog into church. For though a dog is all very well on a gravel path, and shows no disrespect to flowers, the way he wanders down an aisle, looking, lifting a paw, and approaching a pillar with a purpose that makes the blood run cold with horror ... a dog destroys the service completely.

  Virginia Woolf

  Running, Dog, Flower

  Virginia Woolf (2009). “Jacob's Room”, p.40, ReadHowYouWant.com

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