Virginia Woolf Quotes

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

One cannot grow fine flowers in a thin soil.

For some reason, we know not what, his childhood was sharply severed. It lodged in him whole and entire. He could not disperse it.

Among the tortures and devastations of life is this then — our friends are not able to finish their stories.

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.

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

The Reverend C. L. Dodgson had no life. He passed through the world so lightly that he left no print. He melted so passively into Oxford that he is invisible.

I enjoyed talking to her, but thought nothing of her writing. I considered her 'a beautiful little knitter'.

... we can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.

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

She felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance. There were the eternal problems: suffering; death; the poor. There was always a woman dying of cancer even here. And yet she had said to all these children, You shall go through with it.

Humour is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

I mean, what is a woman? I assure you, I do not know. I do not believe that you know. I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill.

But look — he flicks his hand to the back of his neck. For such gesture one falls hopelessly in love for a lifetime.