"Most of a modest woman's life was..." - Quote by Virginia Woolf
Most of a modest woman's life was spent, after all, in denying what, in one day at least of every year, was made obvious.
More by Virginia Woolf
“This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.”
“Let it be fact, one feels, or let it be fiction; the imagination will not serve under two masters simultaneously.”
“I need a little language such as lovers use, words of one syllable such as children speak when they come into the room and find their mother sewing and pick up some scrap of bright wool, a feather, or a shred of chintz. I need a howl; a cry. When the storm crosses the marsh and sweeps over me where I lie in the ditch unregarded I need no words. Nothing neat. Nothing that comes down with all its feet on the floor. None of those resonances and lovely echoes that break and chime from nerve to nerve in our breasts making wild music, false phrases. I have done with phrases.”
More on Womanhood
“If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of utmost importance; very various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as a man; some think even greater.”
“A woman's strength is the unresistible might of weakness.”
“A man makes you feel important - makes you glad you are a woman.”
More on Society
“One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.”
“For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.”
“We might adapt for the artist the joke about there being nothing more dangerous than instruments of war in the hands of generals. In the same way, there is nothing more dangerous than justice in the hands of judges, and a paint brush in the hands of a painter! Just think of the danger to society! But today we haven't the heart to expel the painters and poets because we no longer admit to ourselves that there is any danger in keeping them in our midst.”