Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 8

Quotes about:

• Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Men, Others Opinions

  A Room of One's Own (1929) ch. 3

  53 Copy quote

• It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly. It is fatal for a woman to lay the least stress on any grievance; to plead even with justice any cause; in any way to speak consciously as a woman. And fatal is no figure of speech; for anything written with that conscious bias is doomed to death. It ceases to be fertilized.

  Virginia Woolf

  Stress, Simple, Men

  Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.136

  8 Copy quote

• war is a man's game ... the killing machine has a gender and it is male.

  Virginia Woolf

  War, Men, Games

  8 Copy quote

• A very elementary exercise in psychology, not to be dignified by the name of psycho-analysis, showed me, on looking at my notebook, that the sketch of the angry professor had been made in anger. Anger had snatched my pencil while I dreamt. But what was anger doing there? Interest, confusion, amusement, boredom--all these emotions I could trace and name as they succeeded each other throughout the morning. Had anger, the black snake, been lurking among them? Yes, said the sketch, anger had.

  Virginia Woolf

  Notebook, Morning, Exercise

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.583, Wordsworth Editions

  10 Copy quote

• A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

  Virginia Woolf

  Women, Writing, Words Of Wisdom

  A Room of One's Own ch. 1 (1929)

  52 Copy quote

• While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace.

  Virginia Woolf

  Humility, Dark, Men

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.447, Wordsworth Editions

  19 Copy quote

• A writer should give direct certainty; explanations are so much water poured into the wine.

  Virginia Woolf

  Wine, Giving, Water

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.89, Lulu Press, Inc

  7 Copy quote

• The real novelist, the perfectly simple human being, could go on, indefinitely imaging.

  Virginia Woolf

  Real, Simple, Novelists

  9 Copy quote

• When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

  Virginia Woolf

  Wise, Mother, Writing

  A Room of One's Own ch. 3 (1929)

  16 Copy quote

• But words have been used too often; touched and turned, and left exposed to the dust of the street. The words we seek hang close to the tree. We come at dawn and find them sweet beneath the leaf.

  Virginia Woolf

  Sweet, Dust, Tree

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.69, Wordsworth Editions

  8 Copy quote

• Mrs Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence

  Virginia Woolf

  Party, Giving, Silence

  9 Copy quote

• Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics.

  Virginia Woolf

  Wall, Years, Bricks And Mortar

  Virginia Woolf (2005). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.617, Wordsworth Editions

  9 Copy quote

• Habits and customs are a convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow their souls free play.

  Virginia Woolf

  Play, Support, Soul

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2281, Delphi Classics

  11 Copy quote

• I will go down with my colours flying.

  Virginia Woolf

  Color, Flying

  "A Writer's Diary: Being Extracts from the Diary of Virginia Woolf".

  8 Copy quote

• For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Heart, Wind

  Virginia Woolf (2015). “Orlando”, p.149, Booklassic

  11 Copy quote

• To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.

  Virginia Woolf

  Being Alone, Darkness, Invisible

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.296, Wordsworth Editions

  11 Copy quote

• One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over a hairpin.

  Virginia Woolf

  Running, Jugs, Subtle

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

  7 Copy quote

• There was a serenity about him always that had the look of innocence, when, technically, the word was no longer applicable.

  Virginia Woolf

  Serenity, Looks, Innocence

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1146, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• Let us not take for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.

  Virginia Woolf

  Granted, Bigs

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.122, Lulu Press, Inc

  12 Copy quote

• One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with one's words.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Sea, Bottom

  Virginia Woolf (1981). “Mrs. Dalloway”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

  11 Copy quote

• No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes

  Virginia Woolf

  Eye, Mind, Vain

  Virginia Woolf, Michèle Barrett (1979). “Women and writing”, Womens Pr Ltd

  18 Copy quote

• Dance music ... stirs some barbaric instinct - lulled asleep in our sober lives - you forget centuries of civilization in a second, & yield to that strange passion which sends you madly whirling round the room.

  Virginia Woolf

  Passion, Yield, Civilization

  Virginia Woolf (1990). “A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897-1909”, Vintage

  17 Copy quote

• Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life.

  Virginia Woolf

  Life, Sleep, Insomnia

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.64, Lulu Press, Inc

  11 Copy quote

• I see through most people; I'm hardly ever wrong. I see at once what they've got in them.

  Virginia Woolf

  People

  4 Copy quote

• Money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for.

  Virginia Woolf

  Frivolous, Ifs

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.603, Wordsworth Editions

  10 Copy quote

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