Virginia Woolf Quotes, Thinking Quotes, Years Quotes

Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontes and George Eliot could no more have written than Shakespeare could have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and tamed the natural savagery of the tongue. For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Years Quotes

Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Struggle Quotes , Mean Quotes

One can only believe entirely, perhaps, in what one cannot see.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Motivational Quotes

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Book Quotes , Reading Quotes

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Peace Quotes , War Quotes

A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Always Trying Quotes , Trying Quotes

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

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Death Quotes , Men Quotes

So that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Tattoo Quotes , Beach Quotes

I do not want to be admired. I want to give, to be given, and solitude in which to unfold my possessions.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Giving Quotes , Solitude Quotes

loveliness is infernally sad.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Beauty Quotes

Other people have faces; Susan and Jinny have faces; they are here. Their world is the real world. The things they lift are heavy. They say Yes, they say No; whereas I shift and change and am seen through in a second. If they meet a housemaid she looks at them without laughing. But she laughs at me. They know what to say if spoken to. They laugh really; they get angry really; while I have to look first and do what other people do when they have done it.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Real Quotes , People Quotes

I don't believe that you can possibly separate expression from thought in an imaginative work. The better a thing is expressed, the more completely it is thought.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Believe Quotes , Expression Quotes

Her life was a tissue of vanity and deceit.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Lying Quotes , Vanity Quotes

Romantic Love is only an Illusion. A story one makes up in One's Mind about Another Person.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Romantic Love Quotes , Love Is Quotes

If the best of one's feelings means nothing to the person most concerned in those feelings, what reality is left us?

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Mean Quotes , Reality Quotes

... if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us to break her and bullyher, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Art Quotes , Criticism Quotes

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?

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Lying Quotes , Past Quotes

It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zigzagging to show us the true nature of life.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Taken Quotes , Dancing Quotes

Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life?--startling, unexpected, unknown?

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Heart Quotes , Elderly Quotes