Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 9

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• 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

• 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

• Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

  Virginia Woolf

  Skeletons, Mrs Dalloway, Habit

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.49, Broadview Press

  11 Copy quote

• Still, life had a way of adding day to day

  Virginia Woolf

  Way, Still Life, Stills

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.96, Broadview Press

  9 Copy quote

• Talents of the novelist: ... observation of character, analysis of emotion, people's feelings, personal relations.

  Virginia Woolf

  Character, People, Feelings

  7 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

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

  Virginia Woolf

  War, Men, Games

  9 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

• Mrs Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence

  Virginia Woolf

  Party, Giving, Silence

  9 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

• to teach without zest is a crime.

  Virginia Woolf

  Zest, Crime, Teach

  9 Copy quote

• I need silence, and to be alone and to go out, and to save one hour to consider what has happened to my world, what death has done to my world.

  Virginia Woolf

  Silence, Needs, Done

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1377, Delphi Classics

  15 Copy quote

• Each had his own business to think of. Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.

  Virginia Woolf

  Friendship, Women, Book

  "Selected Works of Virginia Woolf".

  17 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

• 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

• 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

• Communication is truth; communication is happiness. To share is our duty; to go down boldly and bring to light those hidden thoughts which are the most diseased; to conceal nothing; to pretend nothing; if we are ignorant to say so; if we love our friends to let them know it.

  Virginia Woolf

  Communication, Light, Ignorant

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “The Common Reader”, p.63, Lulu Press, Inc

  6 Copy quote

• Well, we must wait for the future to show.

  Virginia Woolf

  Patience, Waiting, Shows

  Virginia Woolf (2015). “To the Lighthouse”, p.98, Virginia Woolf

  12 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

• Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.

  Virginia Woolf

  Sad, Knives, Orlando

  Virginia Woolf, Michael H. Whitworth (2014). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.28, Oxford University Press, USA

  13 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

• 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

• Consolation for those moments when you can't tell whether you're the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world.

  Virginia Woolf

  Genius, World, Fool

  11 Copy quote

• I feel my brains, like a pear, to see if it's ripe; it will be exquisite by September.

  Virginia Woolf

  Brain, September, Pears

  Virginia Woolf (1975). “The Letters of Virginia Woolf: 1888-1912 (Virginia Stephen)”, Harcourt on Demand

  33 Copy quote

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