Selected Virginia Woolf Quotes
Virginia Woolf- Adeline Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941) was an English writer. She is considered as one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
She was born into an affluent household in South Kensington, London, the seventh child of Julia Prinsep Jackson and Leslie Stephen in a blended family of eight, which included the modernist painter Vanessa Bell. From a young age, she was home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature. From 1897 to 1901, she attended the Ladies' Department of King's College London, where she studied classics and history. She also came into contact with the early reformers of women's higher education and the women's rights movement.
Encouraged by her father, she began writing professionally in 1900. After her father's death in 1904, the Stephen family moved from Kensington to the more bohemian Bloomsbury, where, in conjunction with her brothers' intellectual friends, they formed the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group. In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf, and in 1917, the couple founded the Hogarth Press, which published much of her work. They rented a home in Sussex and moved there permanently in 1940.
She had romantic relationships with women. One of her female lovers was Vita Sackville-West, who published Woolf's books through Hogarth Press. Both women's literature became inspired by their relationship, which lasted until Woolf's death.
During the inter-war period, Woolf was an important part of London's literary and artistic society. In 1915, she published her first novel, "The Voyage Out", through her half-brother's publishing house, Gerald Duckworth and Company. Her best-known works include the novels "Mrs Dalloway" (1925), "To the Lighthouse" (1927) and "Orlando" (1928). She is also known for her essays, such as "A Room of One's Own" (1929). She became one of the central subjects of the 1970s movement of feminist criticism. Her works have been translated into more than 50 languages and have attracted attention and widespread commentary for inspiring feminism. A large body of writing is dedicated to her life and work. She has been the subject of plays, novels and films. She is also commemorated by statues in London.
Throughout her life, she had trouble with mental illness. She was institutionalized several times and attempted suicide at least twice. According to Dalsimer (2004), her illness was characterized by symptoms that would later be diagnosed as bipolar disorder, for which there was no effective treatment during her lifetime. In 1941, at the age of 59, she died by drowning herself in the River Ouse at Lewes (Source: Wikipedia).
Selected Virginia Woolf Quotes:
“Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf, Sex
“He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf, Sex
“The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity.”
Virginia Woolf, Sex
“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf, Sex
“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Virginia Woolf, Sex
“As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”
Virginia Woolf, Sex
“Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?”
Virginia Woolf, Sex
“Love, the poet said, is woman's whole existence.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Virginia Woolf, Sex, Love
“The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf, Sex, Freedom
“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf, Sex, Art
“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.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Virginia Woolf, Sex, Art
“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”
Virginia Woolf, Sex, Art
“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf, Sex, Art
“When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Virginia Woolf, Art
“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf, Art
“For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Virginia Woolf, Art
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf, Art
“When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.”
Virginia Woolf, Art, Belief
“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf, Art, Goals, Life
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf, Freedom
“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.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Three, 1923-1928
Virginia Woolf, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.”
Virginia Woolf, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
― Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts
Virginia Woolf, Intelligence/Wisdom
“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf, Life
“It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf, Life
“What does the brain matter compared with the heart?”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf, Life
“I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Virginia Woolf, Life
“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.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf, Life
“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.”
Virginia Woolf, Life
“All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Virginia Woolf, Life
“What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf, Life
“I am rooted, but I flow.”
Virginia Woolf, Life
“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.”
Virginia Woolf, Life
“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.”
Virginia Woolf, Life
“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?”
Virginia Woolf, Life
“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”
Virginia Woolf, Life
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf, Life
“I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual.”
Virginia Woolf, Life, Goals
“Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Virginia Woolf, Life, Goals
“To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is...at last, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away...”
Virginia Woolf, Life, Goals, Love
“Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier 'til this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.”
Virginia Woolf, Life, Love, Happiness
“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
Virginia Woolf, Truth
“Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us.”
― Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room
Virginia Woolf, Goals
“I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun.”
Virginia Woolf, Goals
“Mrs Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf, Goals
“I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.”
― Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being: A Collection of Autobiographical Writing
Virginia Woolf, Goals
“I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary
Virginia Woolf, Goals
“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own / Three Guineas
Virginia Woolf, Goals
“There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Virginia Woolf, Goals
“For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others... and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf, Happiness
“Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Virginia Woolf, Happiness
“How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Virginia Woolf, Happiness
“Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Virginia Woolf, Happiness
“Melancholy were the sounds on a winter's night.”
― Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room
Virginia Woolf, Nature
“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?”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf, Death
“I have lost friends, some by death...others by sheer inability to cross the street.”
Virginia Woolf, Death, Friendship
“He smiled the most exquisite smile, veiled by memory, tinged by dreams.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf, Love
“I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you're everything that exists; the reality of everything.”
― Virginia Woolf, Night and Day
Virginia Woolf, Love
“She thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway