Virginia-woolf Quotes by Virginia Woolf

“Oh, yes, dear reader: the essay is alive. There is no reason to despair.”

— Virginia Woolf

“Meanwhile, let us abolish the ticking of time’s clock with one blow. Come closer.”

— Virginia Woolf

“Yes, I deserve a spring–I owe nobody nothing.”

— Virginia Woolf

“She seemed a compound of the autumn leaves and the winter sunshine ...”

— Virginia Woolf

“The wave paused, and then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes unconsciously.”

— Virginia Woolf

“I exist only in the soles of my feet and in the tired muscles of my thighs. We have been walking for…

— Virginia Woolf

“. . . these errand-boys and furtive and fugitive girls who, ignoring their doom, look in at shop windows? But I am…

— Virginia Woolf

“I need someone whose mind falls like a chopper on a block; to whom the pitch of absurdity is sublime, and a…

— Virginia Woolf

“Vita has been twice. She is doomed to go to Persia; and I mind the thought so much (thinking to lose sight…

— Virginia Woolf

“anyone who’s worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.”

— Virginia Woolf

“I am sitting up in bed: I am very very charming; and Vita is a dear old rough coated sheep dog: or…

— Virginia Woolf

“For if it is rash to walk into a lion's den unarmed, rash to navigate the Atlantic in a rowing boat, rash…

— Virginia Woolf

“The world is crammed with delightful things. I think young people make such a mistake about that — not letting themselves be…

— Virginia Woolf

“Now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in…

— Virginia Woolf

“I have a perfectly romantic and no doubt untrue vision of you in my mind – stamping out the hops in a…

— Virginia Woolf

“And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break…

— Virginia Woolf

“Must, must, must — detestable word. Once more, I who had thought myself immune, who had said, "Now I am rid of…

— Virginia Woolf

“Isa let her sewing drop. The great hooded chairs had become enormous. And Giles too. And Isa too against the window. The…

— Virginia Woolf

“I've just stopped talking to you. It seems so strange. It's perfectly peaceful here--they're playing bowls--I'd just put flowers in your room.…

— Virginia Woolf

“These selves of which we are built up, one on top of another, as plates are piled on a waiter's hand, have…

— Virginia Woolf

“When the white arm rests upon the knee it is a triangle; now it is upright - a column; now a fountain,…

— Virginia Woolf

“And somehow or other, the windows being open, and the book held so that it rested upon a background of escallonia hedges…

— Virginia Woolf

“Yet she said to herself, from the dawn of time odes have been sung to love; wreathes heaped and roses; and if…

— Virginia Woolf

“Shakespeare is getting flyblown; a paternal government might well forbid writing about him, as they put his monument at Stratford beyond the…

— Virginia Woolf

“In your modesty you seem to consider that writers are of different blood and bone from yourselves; that they know more of…

— Virginia Woolf

“Feelings that would not have disgraced a leader who, now that the snow has begun to fall and the mountain-top is covered…

— Virginia Woolf

“As summer neared, as the evening lengthened there came to the wakeful, the hopeful, walking the beach, stirring the pool, imaginations of…

— Virginia Woolf

“However, the majority of women are neither harlots nor courtesans; nor do they sit clasping pug dogs to dusty velvet all through…

— Virginia Woolf

“Lord, how unutterably disgusting life is! What dirty tricks it plays us, one moment free; the next, this. Here we are among…

— Virginia Woolf

“But Orlando was a woman — Lord Palmerston had just proved it. And when we are writing the life of a woman,…

— Virginia Woolf

“My belief is that if we live another century or so — I am talking of the common life which is the…

— Virginia Woolf

“Here she tossed her foot impatiently, and showed an inch or two of calf. A sailor on the mast, who happened to…

— Virginia Woolf

“It's too short,' she said, 'ever so much too short.' Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, half-way down, in…

— Virginia Woolf

“I should never be able to fulfill what is,I understand, the first duty of a lecturer-to hand you after an hour's discourse…

— Virginia Woolf

“Books, she thought, grew of themselves. She never had time to read them. Alas! even the books that had been given her,…

— Virginia Woolf