“Now, again, he paused, and into the breach thus made, leapt Ambition, the harridan, and Poetry, the witch, and Desire of Fame,… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Some people go to priests; others to poetry...I to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken.” — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Translating this to the spiritual regions as their wont is, the poets sang beautifully how roses fade and petals fall. The moment… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Yet genius of a sort must have existed among women as it must have existed among the working classes. Now and again… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
I went from one to the other holding my sorrow - no, not my sorrow but the incomprehensible nature of this our… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“but what is true in it, so it seemed to me, reviewing the story of Shakespeare’s sister as I had made it,… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
We read Charlotte Bronte not for exquisite observation of character, not for comedy, not for a philosophic view of life, but for… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“(W)hy is poetry wholly an elderly taste? When I was twenty I could not for the life of me read Shakespeare for… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
You cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water-it is adulterated, methylated,… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
And when we are writing the life of a woman, we may, it is agreed, waive our demand for action, and substitute… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Here is Lady Winchilsea, for example, I thought, taking down her poems. She was born in the year 1661; she was noble… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Tell me", he wanted to say, "everything in the whole world" - for he had the wildest, most absurd, extravagant ideas about… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
We read Charlotte Bronte not for exquisite observation of character - her characters are vigorous and elementary; not for comedy - hers… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mould of the body and mind entire. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Shakespeare could not have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Married against their will, kept in one room, and to one occupation, how could a dramatist give a full or interesting or… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“The train slows and lengthens, as we approach London, the centre, and my heart draws out too, in fear, in exaltation. I am about… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword. On one side all is correct, definite, orderly; the paths… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Other worshipful objects were content with worship; men, women, God, all let one kneel prostrate; but this form, were it only the shape of… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Sometimes he woke with a brain like lead; at others it was as if a thousand wax tapers were alight and people were throwing… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life -… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
A veil of insanity everywhere: Oh why I was born in this age? It is a terrible age. — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
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… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“It is so vast an alleviation to be able to point for another to look at. And then not to talk. To follow the… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me! (...) I think I could happily live here & read forever.” — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
