Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf, known professionally as Virginia Woolf, was an English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 January 1882
CityLondon, England
long-ago would-be i-realized
Long ago I realized that no other person would be to me what you are.
hands feet bird
We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.
people soul unhappy
I like people to be unhappy because I like them to have souls.
caring thinking essence
Let us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotchpotch of impulses, our perpetual miracle - for the soul throws up wonders every second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death; let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life.
dark night reflection
Night had come—night that she loved of all times, night in which the reflections in the dark pool of the mind shine more clearly than by day.
book reading people
We agreed that people are now afraid of the English language. He [T.S. Eliot] said it came of being bookish, but not reading books enough. One should read all styles thoroughly.
mean carpe-diem vanity
Above all you must illumine your own soul with its profundities and its shallows, and its vanities and its generosities, and say what your beauty means to you or your plainness, and what is your relation to the ever-changing and turning world.
order single-rose water
To enjoy freedom ... we have of course to control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly, squirting half the house in order to water a single rose.
men feminist glory
The chief glory of a woman is not to be talked of, said Pericles, himself a much-talked-of-man.
character people feelings
Talents of the novelist: ... observation of character, analysis of emotion, people's feelings, personal relations ...
fighting voice mad
I have a feeling I shall go mad. I cannot go on longer in these terrible times. I shan't recover this time. I hear voices and cannot concentrate on my work. I have fought against it but cannot fight any longer.
thinking colour depends
You can't think how I depend on you, and when you're not there the colour goes out of my life.
witty silence ornaments
The history of most women is hidden either by silence, or by flourishes and ornaments that amount to silence.
confidence sex struggle
Life for both sexes is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. More than anything... it calls for confidence in oneself...And how can we generate this imponderable quality most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself.