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
eye knowing want-something
There is something I want-something I have come to get, and she fell deeper and deeper without knowing quite what it was, with her eyes closed.
love-is romantic-love mind
Romantic Love is only an Illusion. A story one makes up in One's Mind about Another Person.
taken dancing down-and
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.
suicide voice mad
I feel certain that I'm going mad again, I feel we can't go thru another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices
solitude clumsiness
. . . clumsiness is often mated with a love of solitude.
nature tears together
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.
cat order waiting
I want some one to sit beside after the day's pursuit and all its anguish, after its listening, its waitings, and its suspicions. After quarreling and reconciliation I need privacy--to be alone with you, to set this hubbub in order. For I am as neat as a cat in my habits.
wise men thinking
Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.
notebook morning exercise
A very elementary exercise in psychology, not to be dignified by the name of psycho-analysis, showed me, on looking at my notebook, that the sketch of the angry professor had been made in anger. Anger had snatched my pencil while I dreamt. But what was anger doing there? Interest, confusion, amusement, boredom--all these emotions I could trace and name as they succeeded each other throughout the morning. Had anger, the black snake, been lurking among them? Yes, said the sketch, anger had.
heart sea purple
and then he could not see her come into a room without a sense of the flowing of robes, of the flowering of blossoms, of the purple waves of the sea, of all things that are lovely and mutable on the surface but still and passionate in their heart.
book reading names
I have sometimes dreamt ... that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards -- their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble -- the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.
difficulty communicate oneself
For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself.
communication light ignorant
Communication is truth; communication is happiness. To share is our duty; to go down boldly and bring to light those hidden thoughts which are the most diseased; to conceal nothing; to pretend nothing; if we are ignorant to say so; if we love our friends to let them know it.
dream wine sleep
Every season is likeable, and wet days and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and the most common actions──a walk, a talk, solitude in one’s own orchard──can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind. Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is only two finger’s-breadth from goodness.