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VIRGINIA WOOLF QUOTES


"8_6_Woolf" (CC BY 2.0) by Hackley Public Library

Virginia Woolf is undoubtedly a prolific writer who has produced large amount of quality work. Here is a collection of some of her famous quotes from various books.

"I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in."
- Virginia Woolf

"I want to write a novel about Silence, "he said; "the things people don't say".
-Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

"I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one's own, with pictures and music and everything beautiful. "
-Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

"Anyone who's worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm. "
- Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room

“They all dreamt of each other that night, as was natural, considering how thin the partitions were between them, and how strangely they had been lifted off the earth to sit next each other in mid-ocean, and see every detail of each others' faces, and hear whatever they chanced to say.” 
- Virginia Woolf, The Voyage out

"No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes” 
-Virginia Woolf

"The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments.” 
-Virginia Woolf

“No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes” 
-Virginia Woolf

"And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her, as well as honor and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.” 
-Virginia Woolf, Selected Essays

"For the film maker must come by his convention, as painters and writers and musicians have done before him.” 
-Virginia Woolf, Selected Essays

"Either I shall find it, or I shall not find it. I examine my note-case. I look in all my pockets. These are the things that forever interrupt the process upon which I am eternally engaged of finding some perfect phrase that fits this moment exactly.” 
-Virginia Woolf, The Waves

"Among the tortures and devastations of life is this then—our friends are not able to finish their stories.”
-Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
-Virginia Woolf

"Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

"You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
-Virginia Woolf

"Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
-Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts

“Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?”
-Virginia Woolf

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
-Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
-Virginia Woolf

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”
-Virginia Woolf

“As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”
-Virginia Woolf

“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”
-Virginia Woolf

“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?”
-Virginia Woolf

“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.”
-Virginia Woolf

“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.”
-Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.”
-Virginia Woolf

“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
-Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own / Three Guineas

“Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.”
-Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
-Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'.”
-Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“Love, the poet said, is woman's whole existence.”
-Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone.”
-Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“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.”
-Virginia Woolf

“I am rooted, but I flow.”
-Virginia Woolf

“A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.”
-Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”
-Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.”
-Virginia Woolf

“When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.”
-Virginia Woolf

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
-Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.”
-Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity. ”
-Virginia Woolf

“What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”
-Virginia Woolf,  To the Lighthouse

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