Virginia Woolf Quotes
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Until we can comprehend the beguiling beauty of a single flower, we are woefully unable to grasp the meaning and potential of life itself.
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Let us not take for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.
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Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange.
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Without self awareness we are as babies in the cradles.
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What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with this extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was.
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Life would split apart without letters.
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I like people to be unhappy because I like them to have souls.
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And the poem, I think, is only your voice speaking.
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Be truthful, and the result is bound to be amazingly interesting.
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When the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning, it satisfies the senses amazingly.
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Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a room with someone, up went her back like a cat's; or she purred.
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war is a man's game ... the killing machine has a gender and it is male.
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You cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water-it is adulterated, methylated, sanded poetry that makes the best lectures.
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I ride rough waters, and shall sink with no one to save me.
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To let oneself be carried on passively is unthinkable.
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The weather varies between heavy fog and pale sunshine; My thoughts follow the exact same process.
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it is strange how the dead leap out on us at street corners, or in dreams
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I detest the masculine point of view. I am bored by his heroism, virtue, and honour. I think the best these men can do is not talk about themselves anymore.
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I want the concentration and the romance, and the worlds all glued together, fused, glowing: have no time to waste any more on prose.
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Most of a modest woman's life was spent, after all, in denying what, in one day at least of every year, was made obvious.
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Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.
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Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.
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Long ago I realized that no other person would be to me what you are.
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A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in the mind, if only at the back.