Virginia Woolf quotes - page 4

Her life was a tissue of vanity and deceit. (Virginia Woolf)
No, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. View quote
Virginia Woolf
First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. View quote
Virginia Woolf
One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that. View quote
Virginia Woolf
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. View quote
Virginia Woolf
Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces. View quote
Virginia Woolf
Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe? View quote
Virginia Woolf
And yet, the only exciting life is the imaginary one. View quote
Virginia Woolf
Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than to merely keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world's view of us. View quote
Virginia Woolf
But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was almost impossible to dislike anyone if one looked at them. View quote
Virginia Woolf
If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now that in the time of the Pharaohs? (Virginia Woolf)
Half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew for no one was ever for a second taken in. View quote
Virginia Woolf
So that is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman looking at a girl throwing a ball. View quote
Virginia Woolf
The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness. View quote
Virginia Woolf
Well, we must wait for the future to show. View quote
Virginia Woolf
One can only believe entirely, perhaps, in what one cannot see. View quote
Virginia Woolf
They came to her, naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that; one wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions. View quote
Virginia Woolf
Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living? View quote
Virginia Woolf
Among the tortures and devastations of life is this then - our friends are not able to finish their stories. View quote
Virginia Woolf
In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows. View quote
Virginia Woolf
At one and the same time, therefore, society is everything and society is nothing. Society is the most powerful concoction in the world and society has no existence whatsoever. (Virginia Woolf)
Love and religion! thought Clarissa, going back into the drawing room, tingling all over. How detestable, how detestable they are! View quote
Virginia Woolf
After that, how unbelievable death was! - that is must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all. View quote
Virginia Woolf
Fatigue is the safest sleeping draught. View quote
Virginia Woolf
When people are happy they have a reserve upon which to draw, whereas she was like a wheel without a tyre. View quote
Virginia Woolf