Virginia Woolf quotes - page 6

Just in case you ever foolishly forget; I'm never not thinking of you. (Virginia Woolf)
By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. 'Tis the waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life. View quote
Virginia Woolf
Once she knows how to read there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in and that is herself. View quote
Virginia Woolf
One wanted, she thought, dipping her brush deliberately, to be on a level with ordinary experience, to feel simply that's a chair, that's a table, and yet at the same time, It's a miracle, it's an ecstasy. View quote
Virginia Woolf
I [who] am perpetually making notes in the margin of my mind for some final statement... View quote
Virginia Woolf
Would there be trees if we didn't see them? View quote
Virginia Woolf
O friendship, I too will press flowers between the pages of Shakespeare's sonnets! View quote
Virginia Woolf
Chastity... has, even now, a religious importance in a woman's life, and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it free and bring it to the light of day demands courage of the rarest. View quote
Virginia Woolf
Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently. View quote
Virginia Woolf
At this Helen laughed outright. "Nonsense," she said. "You're not a Christian. You've never thought what you are.-And there are lots of other questions," she continued, "though perhaps we can't ask them yet." Although they had talked so freely they were all uncomfortably conscious that they really knew nothing about each other. "The important questions," Hewet pondered, "the really interesting ones. I doubt that one ever does ask them." Rachel, who was slow to accept the fact that only a very few things can be said even by people who know each other well, insisted on knowing what he meant. "Whether we've ever been in love?" she enquired. "Is that the kind of question you mean?" View quote
Virginia Woolf
The chief charges against her were (1) that she was dead, and therefore could not hold any property; (2) that she was a woman which amounts to much the same thing ... (Virginia Woolf)
She alone spoke the truth; to her alone could he speak it. That was the source of her everlasting attraction for him, perhaps; she was a person to whom one could say what came into one's head. View quote
Virginia Woolf
I am amused at my relations with her: left so ardent in January – and now what? Also I like her presence and her beauty. Am I in love with her? But what is love? Her being 'in love' with me, excites and flatters; and interests. What is this 'love? View quote
Virginia Woolf
That was the burden,' she mused, 'laid on me in the cradle; murmured by waves; breathed by restless elm trees; crooned by singing women; what we must rememeber; what we would forget. View quote
Virginia Woolf
If, then, one should try to sum up the character of women's fiction at the present moment, one would say that it is courageous; it is sincere; it keeps closely to what women feel. It is not bitter. It does not insist upon its femininity. View quote
Virginia Woolf
But delightful though it is to indulge in righteous indignation, it is misplaced if we agree with the lady's-maid that high birth is a form of congenital insanity, that the sufferer merely inherits the diseases of his ancestors, and endures them, for the most part very stoically, in one of those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, euphemistically, as the stately homes of England. View quote
Virginia Woolf
Even Morgan seems to me to be based on some hidden rock. Talking of Proust and Lawrence he said he'd prefer to be Lawrence; but much rather would be himself. He is aloof, serene, a snob, he says, reading masterpieces only. View quote
Virginia Woolf
Dearest, I want to tell you that you have given me complete happiness. No one could have done more than you have done. Please believe that. But I know that I shall never get over this: and I am wasting your life. It is this madness. Nothing anyone says can persuade me. You can work, and you will be much better without me. You see I can't write this even, which shows I am right. All I want to say is that until this disease came on we were perfectly happy. It was all due to you. No one could have been so good as you have been, from the very first day till now. Everyone knows that. V. View quote
Virginia Woolf
The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice. View quote
Virginia Woolf
To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have- to want and want- how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again! View quote
Virginia Woolf
I am rooted, but I flow. (Virginia Woolf)
There is the strange power we have of changing facts by the force of the imagination. View quote
Virginia Woolf
For this moment, this one moment, we are together. I press you to me. Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. I sob, I sob. View quote
Virginia Woolf
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. View quote
Virginia Woolf
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. View quote
Virginia Woolf