Virginia Woolf Quotes

Total quotes (159)

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

Birthname

AKA Virginia Woolf

Birthday January 25, 1882

Birthplace United Kingdom

Death March 28, 1941

Manner of Death Suicide, 13 June 2012 Iraq Attacks

Educated At King's College London

Nationality British, United Kingdom Of Great Britain And Ireland, United Kingdom

Occupations Essayist, Short Story Writer, Feminist, Autobiographer, Diarist

Spouse Leonard Sidney Woolf

Total quotes (159)

I want to write a novel about silence. The things people don’t say.

— Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

Silence Writing novel

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What matters is precisely this; the unspoken at the edge of the spoken.

— Virginia Woolf, via GoodReads

unspoken spoken Unsaid Things Unsaid Feelings Feelings Communication

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I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.

— Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being

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She did not want to move, or to speak. She wanted to rest, to lean, to dream. She felt very tired.

— Virginia Woolf, The Years

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I am overwhelmed with things I ought to have written about and never found the proper words.

— Virginia Woolf, Diary of Virginia Woolf Vol. 1

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The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went.

— Virginia Woolf, Orlando

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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, Street Haunting

Books Novels Secondhand library Oldness

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I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you’re everything that exists; the reality of everything.

— Virginia Woolf, Night and Day

Love inspiration Reality

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I am the seasons, I think sometimes, January, May, November; the mud, the mist, the dawn. I cannot be tossed about, or float gently, or mix with other people.

— Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Seasons changing as times change Feelings emotions Self & Identity special snowflake Sensitivity self awareness Self Construction

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How many times have people used a pen or paintbrush because they couldn’t pull the trigger?

— Virginia Woolf, Selected Essays

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They were in love, happy, content; but why was it so painful being in love, why was there so much pain in happiness?

— Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)

Love Happiness Contentment Pain hurt

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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 or admires her understanding.

— Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography

Dating Respect Love

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The truth is that I am not one of those who find their satisfaction in one person, or in infinity.

— Virginia Woolf, The Waves

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But with you I am deeply passionately, unrequitedly in love.

— Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings (The Cutting Edge: Lesbian Life and Literature Series)

Passionate Love One Sided Love Romantic Literature

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I am in the mood to dissolve in the sky.

— Virginia Woolf, The Unabridged Journals Of Sylvia Plath

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My heart currently resembles the ashes of my cigarettes.

— Virginia Woolf, I Am In The Mood To Dissolve In The Sky

heart Cigarettes Nicotine Broken Heart Heart Break Pain

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They went in and out of each other’s minds without any effort.

— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Thinking of Someone Relationships Love

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It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels.

— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

expressing feelings Feelings expression

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Be truthful, and the result is bound to be amazingly interesting.

— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Honesty Positive Trait Motivational Quote

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What does the brain matter compared with the heart?

— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

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I feel insignificant, lost, but exultant.

— Virginia Woolf, Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)

Deep Feelings Ironic

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Thinking is my fighting.

— Virginia Woolf, Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid

Thinking Mind Intelligence strength

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People are–nothing more.

— Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out: By Virginia Woolf - Illustrated

Society People We Me Meet

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The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

— Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House: The Complete Shorter Fiction

Eyes Thoughts Metaphor Prison

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It becomes clear that I am not one and simple, but complex and many.

— Virginia Woolf, The Waves

complex Complicated Personality Paradox

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I think you understand better than most people.

— Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out

Understanding Compatibility Comfortability

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I want everything – love, adventure, intimacy, work.

— Virginia Woolf, Letter to Leonard Woolf

Love Desire Intimacy Work Adventure

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My boldness terrifies me.

— Virginia Woolf, Walking Virginia Woolf’s London: An Investigation in Literary Geography

strength boldness Bravery Courage

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My imagination tells lies, too.

— Virginia Woolf, Selected Diaries

Imagination Reality Lie

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I wish you’d find the exit out of my head.

— Virginia Woolf, Letter to Vita Sackville-West,’ November 22, 1933

Hope Desire Thoughts Thinking Love

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I like observing people. I like looking at things.

— Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)

Observant curious interested

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She is rather like the winter sun–her ruddy edges slightly blurred.

— Virginia Woolf, The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf; Selected Diaries

Wild Child Nature

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Just in case you ever foolishly forget; I’m never not thinking of you.

— Virginia Woolf, Selected Letters

Love Literature I Miss You LDR

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I think it is likely that the best of everything is made in solitude.

— Virginia Woolf, Selected Works Of Virginia Woolf

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No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.

— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Be yourself Chill Impressing Others

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Directly the mulberry tree begins to make you circle, break off. Pelt the tree with laughter.

— Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas

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It is so beautiful, so exciting, this love, that I tremble on the verge of it.

— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Terror of Love Intensity of Feeling Feeling Too Much

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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

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But I do adore you — every part of you from heel to hair. Never will you shake me off, try as you may.

— Virginia Woolf, The letters of Virginia Woolf, Volume 3

Love Confession of Feelings Adolesence admiration Attraction

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Oh, this is pain, this is anguish! I faint, I fail. Now my body thaws; I am unsealed, I am incandescent.

— Virginia Woolf, The Waves

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A whole lifetime was too short to bring out, the full flavour; to extract every ounce of pleasure, every shade of meaning.

— Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

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

— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

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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.

— Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader

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I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.

— Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Fluid Identity Who Calls When I Say I?Always Shifting

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'That was the burden,' she mused, 'laid on me in the cradle; murmured by waves; breathed by restless elm trees; crooned by singing women; what we must rememeber; what we would forget.'

— Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts

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Theirs, too, is the word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.

— Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader

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My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child–wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry.

— Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary

Anxiety what anxiety feels like anxiety in literature Mind mindfulness

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‘The flower,’ said Bernard, ‘the red carnation that stood in the vase on the table of the restaurant when we dined together with Percival, is become a six-sided flower; made of six lives.’

— Virginia Woolf, The Waves

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I need solitude. I need space. I need air. I need the empty fields round me; and my legs pounding along roads; and sleep; and animal existence.

— Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf

desires Needs and Wants Tired

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You have been in every way all that anyone could be...If anybody could have saved me it would have been you.

— Virginia Woolf, Afterwords: Letters on the Death of Virginia Woolf

Love letter to a lover Lover letter farewell letter Farewell goodbye Parting Ways

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