Virginia Woolf quotes

Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.

The beauty of the world, which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.

Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art.

The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.

The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

That great Cathedral space which was childhood.

That great Cathedral space which was childhood.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity.

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

The beautiful seems right by force of beauty, and the feeble wrong because of weakness.

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.

Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.

Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.

If we help an educated man's daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? - not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?

Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

When the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning, it satisfies the senses amazingly.

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

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.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure - the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.

To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea.

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

If we help an educated man's daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? - not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art.

Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

If we help an educated man's daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? - not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?