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

He would argue with her about killing themselves; and explain how wicked people were; how he could see them making up lies as they passed in the street. He knew all their thoughts, he said; he knew everything. He knew the meaning of the world, he sai...

Virginia Woolf

It was awful, he cried, awful, awful! Still, the sun was hot. Still, one got over things. Still, life had a way of adding day to day.

Virginia Woolf

It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.

Virginia Woolf

First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.

Virginia Woolf

Clarissa had a theory in those days - they had heaps of theories, always theories, as young people have. It was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. For how could they know each other? You met every...

Virginia Woolf

What does the brain matter compared with the heart?

Virginia Woolf

To love makes one solitary.

Virginia Woolf

With twice his wits, she had to see things through his eyes -- one of the tragedies of married life.

Virginia Woolf

For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would come over her, If he were with me now what would he say? --some days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, ...

Virginia Woolf

She sighed, she snored, not that she was asleep, only drowsy and heavy, drowsy and heavy, like a field of clover in the sunshine this hot July day, with the bees going round and about and the yellow butterflies.

Virginia Woolf

Here was one room; there another. Did religion solve that, or love?

Virginia Woolf

for she could never think of anything to say to Clarissa, though she liked her. She had lots of fine qualities; but they had nothing in common - she and Clarissa.

Virginia Woolf

Love and religion! thought Clarissa, going back into the drawing room, tingling all over. How detestable, how detestable they are!

Virginia Woolf

This susceptibility to impressions had been his undoing, no doubt. Still at his age he had, like a boy or a girl even, these alternations of mood; good days, bad days, for no reason whatever, happiness from a pretty face, downright misery at the sigh...

Virginia Woolf

Milly Brush once might almost have fallen in love with these silences.

Virginia Woolf

As we are a doomed race, chained to a sinking ship, as the whole thing is a bad joke, let us, at any rate, do our part; mitigate the suffering of our fellow-prisoners; decorate the dungeon with flowers and air-cushions; be as decent as we possibly ca...

Virginia Woolf

These hotels are not consoling places. Far from it. Any number of people had hung up their hats on those pegs. Even the flies, if you thought of it, had settled on other people’s noses. As for the cleanliness which hit him in the face, it wasn’t ...

Virginia Woolf

An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; ta...

Virginia Woolf

Once she knows how to read there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in and that is herself.

Virginia Woolf

I don't care much whether I ever get to know anything - but I want to work out something in figures - something that hasn't got to do with human beings. I don't want people particularly. In some ways, Henry, I'm a humbug - I mean, I'm not what you al...

Virginia Woolf

People do terrible things to each other, but it's worse in the places where everybody is kept in the dark.

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