xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

“It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“Distorted realities have always been my cup of tea.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Source: Selected Diaries

“what she loved: life, London, this moment of June.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

“Effort ceases. Time flaps on the mast. There we stop; there we stand. Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

“For the young people could not talk. And why should they? Shout, embrace, swing, be up at dawn…”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

“When people are happy they have a reserve upon which to draw, whereas she was like a wheel without a tyre”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

“Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“Chastity… has, even now, a religious importance in a woman's life, and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it free and bring it to the light of day demands courage of the rarest.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

“Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the center which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

“You’re the only person I’ve ever met who seems to have the faintest conception of what I mean when I say a thing.”

Virginia Woolf book The Voyage Out

Source: The Voyage Out

“Night had come—night that she loved of all times, night in which the reflections in the dark pool of the mind shine more clearly than by day.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

“For nothing was simply one thing.”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

“For it is probable that when people talk aloud, the selves (of which there may be more than two thousand) are conscious of disserverment, and are trying to communicate but when communication is established there is nothing more to be said.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“The real novelist, the perfectly simple human being, could go on, indefinitely imaging.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

“Happiness is in the quiet, ordinary things. A table, a chair, a book with a paper-knife stuck between the pages. And the petal falling from the rose, and the light flickering as we sit silent.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

“Fatigue is the safest sleeping draught.”

Virginia Woolf book Jacob's Room

Source: Jacob's Room

“But the close withdrew: the hand softened. It was over-- the moment.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

“I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves