Dive into the mesmerizing world of literature as we explore 50 artful Virginia Woolf quotes that will stir your heart, evoke your emotions, and invite you to question the world around you. In the canon of English literature, Virginia Woolf's role is irrefutable, with her ground-breaking narratives and innovative stream-of-consciousness writing style. A prominent figure of the modernist literary movement, her quotes give us a unique insight into her profound, sometimes complex, but always captivating worldview.
Did you know that Virginia Woolf wrote her famous novel, “To The Lighthouse,” inspired by the childhood summer vacations she spent with her family in St. Ives, Cornwall? She often spoke about the profound impact those early experiences had on her, shaping her sensibilities as a writer. The beautiful blend of the real and the symbolic in her writings reflects the depth of her thoughts. From these depths, we have curated a collection of Virginia Woolf quotes that are as artful as they are profound. Immerse yourself in the wit, wisdom, and the sheer brilliance of Woolf's mind, forever preserved in her timeless quotes. Buckle up and get ready to be moved by the expressive power of these artful Virginia Woolf quotes.
The Profound Realm of Virginia Woolf
1. “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
2. “You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
3. “Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
4. “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.”
5. “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
6. “Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.”
7. “The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.”
8. “I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
9. “If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
10. “As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”
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Exploring the Depths of Woolf's Mind
- “A mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine.”
- “Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.”
- “The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think.”
- “I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.”
- “The beauty of the world…has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.”
- “One can only believe entirely, perhaps, in what one cannot see.”
- “Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.”
- “To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away.”
- “Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art.”
- “The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity.”
The Rich Tapestry of Woolf's Perception
- “It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman manly, or a man womanly.”
- “To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father.”
- “If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or ‘our' country, let it be understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share.”
- “One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.”
- “The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.”
- “Growing older, we become more and more the stuff our forebears put into us.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.”
- “Every season is likeable, and wet days and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude.”
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The Intricate Layers of Woolf's Vision
- “It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.”
- “Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.”
- “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.”
- “To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries.”
- “I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.”
- “They went in and out of each other's minds without any effort.”
- “Boredom is the legitimate kingdom of the philanthropic.”
- “Once she knows how to read there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in and that is herself.”
- “When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?”
- “I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me.”
Woolf's Endless River of Thought
- “Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.”
- “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.”
- “I worship you, but I loathe marriage. I hate its smugness, its safety, its compromise and the thought of you interfering with my work, hindering me; what would you answer?”
- “Habit and hardness of heart are the great enemies of the novelist.”
- “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.”
- “For truth has a power of its own; and much as we like to ignore it, the truth changes us.”
- “But why do I notice everything?… She has perceptions far in excess of the facts.”
- “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.”
- “No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
- “Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”
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