Quotes by Virginia Woolf

About Virginia Woolf:

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The real novelist, the perfectly simple human being, could go on, indefinitely imaging.

Virginia Woolf

When you are silent you are again beautiful.

Virginia Woolf

Beneath my eyes opens -- a book; I see to the bottom; the heart -- I see to the depths. I know what loves are trembling into fire; how jealousy shoots its green flashes hither and thither; how intricately love crosses love; love makes knots; love bru...

Virginia Woolf

For this moment, this one moment, we are together. I press you to me. Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. I sob, I sob.

Virginia Woolf

This self now as I leant over the gate looking down over fields rolling in waves of colour beneath me made no answer. He threw up no opposition. He attempted no phrase. His fist did not form. I waited. I listened. Nothing came, nothing. I cried then ...

Virginia Woolf

And in me too the wave rises. It swells; it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new desire, something rising beneath me like the proud horse whose rider first spurs and then pulls him back. What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us, y...

Virginia Woolf

Death is woven in with the violets,” said Louis. “Death and again death.”)

Virginia Woolf

I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams.

Virginia Woolf

Oh, to awake from dreaming!

Virginia Woolf

When the white arm rests upon the knee it is a triangle; now it is upright - a column; now a fountain, falling. It makes no sign, it does not beckon, it does not see us. Behind it roars the sea. It is beyond our reach. Yet there I venture. There I go...

Virginia Woolf

Yet there are moments when the walls of the mind grow thin; when nothing is unabsorbed, and I could fancy that we might blow so vast a bubble that the sun might set and rise in it and we might take the blue of midday and the black of midnight and be ...

Virginia Woolf

I am not one and simple, but complex and many.

Virginia Woolf

I want someone to sit beside after the day's pursuit and all its anguish, after its listening, and its waitings, and its suspicions. After quarrelling and reconciliation I need privacy - to be alone with you, to set this hubbub in order. For I am as ...

Virginia Woolf

What the fissure through which one sees disaster? The circle is unbroken; the harmony complete. Here is the central rhythm; here the common mainspring. I watch it expand, contract; and then expand again. Yet I am not included.

Virginia Woolf

So the being grows rings; identity becomes robust. What was fiery and furtive like a fling of grain cast into the air and blown hither and thither by wild gusts of life from every quarter is now methodical and orderly and flung with a purpose--so it ...

Virginia Woolf

Up goes the rocket. Its golden grain falls, fertilising, upon the rich soil of my imagination.

Virginia Woolf

When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.

Virginia Woolf

I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on pavement.

Virginia Woolf

I was always going to the bookcase for another sip of the divine specific.

Virginia Woolf

How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously. Frailly. In thin stripes. It hangs like a glass cage. It is a hoop to be fractured by a tiny jar. There is a spark there. Next moment a flush of dun. Then a vapour as...

Virginia Woolf

The lake of my mind, unbroken by oars, heaves placidly and soon sinks into an oily somnolence.’ That will be useful.

Virginia Woolf

Author Bio

  • NameVirginia Woolf
  • DescriptionEnglish writer
  • AliasesAdeline Virginia Woolf; Adeline Virginia Stephen
  • BornJanuary 25, 1882
  • DiedMarch 28, 1941
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWoman Of Letters; Novelist; Essayist; Autobiographer; Short Story Writer; Diarist; Literary Critic; Publisher
  • WorksTo The Lighthouse; Mrs Dalloway; Orlando: A Biography; A Room Of One's Own