“Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and fall and rise again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet. Boats and youth passing and distant trees, ‘the falling fountains of the pendent trees.’ I see it all. I feel it all. I am inspired. My eyes fill with tears. Yet even as I feel this, I lash my frenzy higher and higher. It foams. It becomes artificial, insincere. Words and words and words, how they gallop— how they lash their long manes and tails, but for some fault in me I cannot give myself to their backs; I cannot fly with them.”
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Tagged: Ideals, Longing, Power of Words
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Read:
The Waves

Explore more quotes:

Beach Quotes (66)
Deep Quotes (500)
Encouraging Quotes (45)
Funny Quotes (183)
Inspirational Quotes (501)
Quotes about Love (1,439)
TV Quotes (1,000+)
Movie Quotes (1,000+)

About the author

This page was created by our editorial team. Each page is manually curated, researched, collected, and issued by our staff writers. Quotes contained on this page have been double checked for their citations, their accuracy and the impact it will have on our readers.

Kelly Peacock is an accomplished poet and social media expert based in Brooklyn, New York. Kelly has a Bachelor's degree in creative writing from Farieligh Dickinson University and has contributed to many literary and cultural publications. Kelly assists on a wide variety of quote inputting and social media functions for Quote Catalog. Visit her personal website here.

Kendra Syrdal is a writer, editor, partner, and senior publisher for The Thought & Expression Company. Over the last few years she has been personally responsible for writing, editing, and producing over 30+ million pageviews on Thought Catalog.