Virginia Woolf Quotes - Page 9

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• Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in it's place?

  Virginia Woolf

  Illusion, Praise, Catastrophe

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.572, Wordsworth Editions

  11 Copy quote

• Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art.

  Virginia Woolf

  Art, Nature, Humans

  Virginia Woolf (1990). “A moment's liberty: the shorter diary”, Vintage

  16 Copy quote

• Friendships, even the best of them, are frail things. One drifts apart.

  Virginia Woolf

  Frail

  Virginia Woolf (2015). “To the Lighthouse”, p.69, Virginia Woolf

  8 Copy quote

• a novelist's chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He has to induce in himself a state of perpetual lethargy. He wants life to proceed with the utmost quiet and regularity. He wants to see the same faces, to read the same books, to do the same things day after day, month after month, while he is writing, so that nothing may break the illusion in which he is living - so that nothing may disturb or disquiet the mysterious nosings about, feelings around, darts, dashes, and sudden discoveries of that very shy and illusive spirit, the imagination.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Writing, Discovery

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.3994, Delphi Classics

  13 Copy quote

• We live in constant danger of coming apart. The mystery of why we do not always come apart is the animating tension of all art.

  Virginia Woolf

  Art, Mystery, Danger

  9 Copy quote

• As I grow old I hate the writing of letters more and more, and like getting them better and better.

  Virginia Woolf

  Hate, Writing, Letters

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

  14 Copy quote

• I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts.

  Virginia Woolf

  Thinking, Facts, Want

  Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2001). “The Mark on the Wall and Other Short Fiction”, p.5, Oxford University Press, USA

  6 Copy quote

• This self now as I leant over the gate looking down over fields rolling in waves of colour beneath me made no answer. He threw up no opposition. He attempted no phrase. His fist did not form. I waited. I listened. Nothing came, nothing. I cried then with a sudden conviction of complete desertion. Now there is nothing. No fin breaks the waste of this immeasurable sea. Life has destroyed me. No echo comes when I speak, no varied words. This is more truly death than the death of friends, than the death of youth.

  Virginia Woolf

  Echoes, Self, Sea

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1446, Delphi Classics

  15 Copy quote

• By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. 'Tis the waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.

  Virginia Woolf

  Dream, Waking, Life Is

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.217, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  11 Copy quote

• You send a boy to school in order to make friends - the right sort.

  Virginia Woolf

  School, Boys, Order

  Virginia Woolf, Anne Olivier Bell (1977). “1920-1924”, Chatto & Windus

  12 Copy quote

• Criticism? An artist wants praise. Praise.

  Virginia Woolf

  Artist, Criticism, Want

  13 Copy quote

• They went in and out of each other's minds without any effort.

  Virginia Woolf

  Effort, Mind

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.168, Wordsworth Editions

  10 Copy quote

• I like going from one lighted room to another, such is my brain to me; lighted rooms.

  Virginia Woolf

  Brain, Rooms

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4339, Delphi Classics

  8 Copy quote

• Like all very handsome men who die tragically, he left not so much a character behind him as a legend. Youth and death shed a halo through which it is difficult to see a real face.

  Virginia Woolf

  Real, Character, Men

  Virginia Woolf (2017). “Moments Of Being”, p.100, Random House

  17 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

  32 Copy quote

• Peace was the third emotion. Love. Hate. Peace. Three emotions made the ply of human life.

  Virginia Woolf

  Hate, Three, Plies

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “Between the Acts”, p.64, Virginia Woolf

  6 Copy quote

• But nothing is so strange when one is in love (and what was this except being in love?) as the complete indifference of other people.

  Virginia Woolf

  Being In Love, People, Strange

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.873, Delphi Classics

  10 Copy quote

• literature is the record of our discontent.

  Virginia Woolf

  Records, Literature, Discontent

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2014, Delphi Classics

  12 Copy quote

• Women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time.

  Virginia Woolf

  Poetry, Poet, Beacons Of Light

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.590, Wordsworth Editions

  8 Copy quote

• I enjoy almost everything. Yet I have some restless searcher in me. Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay hands on and say “This is it”? My depression is a harassed feeling. I’m looking: but that’s not it — that’s not it. What is it? And shall I die before I find it?

  Virginia Woolf

  Discovery, Hands, Feelings

  Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.97, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  8 Copy quote

• We shall be the mouthpieces of the divine spirit—

  Virginia Woolf

  Spirit, Divine, Mouthpiece

  Virginia Woolf (2015). “A Room of One's Own: And Three Guineas”, p.143, Oxford University Press, USA

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• For some time she observed a great yellow butterfly, which was opening and closing its wings very slowly on a little flat stone. "What is it to be in love?" she demanded, after a long silence; each word as it came into being seemed to shove itself out into an unknown sea. Hypnotized by the wings of the butterfly, and awed by the discovery of a terrible possibility in life, she sat for some time longer. When the butterfly flew away, she rose, and within, her two books beneath her arm returned again, much as a soldier prepares for battle.

  Virginia Woolf

  Book, Butterfly, Discovery

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.157, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• I mean it's the writing, not the being read, that excites me.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Joy

  "A Writer's Diary".

  14 Copy quote

• Come indoors then, and open the books on your library shelves. For you have a library and a good one. A working library, a living library; a library where nothing is chained down and nothing is locked up; a library where the songs of the singers rise naturally from the lives of the livers.

  Virginia Woolf

  Song, Book, Library

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.828, Wordsworth Editions

  22 Copy quote

• to teach without zest is a crime.

  Virginia Woolf

  Zest, Crime, Teach

  8 Copy quote

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