Virginia Woolf Quotes

“Venerable are letters, infinitely brave, forlorn, and lost. Life would split asunder without them. 'Come to tea, come to dinner, what's the truth of the story? have you heard the news? life in the capital is wonderful; the Russian dancers....' These are our stays and props. These lace our days together and make of life a perfect globe.”

“Biography is to give a man some kind of shape after his death.”

“Like" and "like" and "like"--but what is the thing that lies beneath the semblance of the thing?”

“Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?”

“It is the duty of the writer to describe.”

“Would there be trees if we didn't see them?”

“Doesn't one always think of the past, in a garden with men and women lying under the trees? Aren't they one's past, all that remains of it, those men and women, those ghosts lying under the trees ... one's happiness, one's reality?”

“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.”

“Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.”

“London perpetually attracts, stimulates, gives me a play and a story and a poem, without any trouble, save that of moving my legs through the streets... To walk alone through London is the greatest rest.”

“more and more I come to loathe any dominion of one over another; any leadership, any imposition of the will.”

“But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was almost impossible to dislike anyone if one looked at them.”

“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.”

“The proper stuff of fiction' does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss.”

“Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels for grown-up people.”

“Let us not take for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.”

“A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.”

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

“I am volatile for one, rigid for another, angular as an icicle in silver, or voluptuous as a candle flame in gold.”

“He was a thorough good sort; a bit limited; a bit thick in the head; yes; but a thorough good sort. Whatever he took up he did in the same matter-of-fact sensible way; without a touch of imagination, without a sparkle of brilliancy, but with the inexplicable niceness of his type.”

“Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely? All this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?”

“The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.”

“I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.”

“The weather varies between heavy fog and pale sunshine; My thoughts follow the exact same process.”

“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?”