xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

“Intellectual freedom depends upon material things.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“So that is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman looking at a girl throwing a ball”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

“Half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew for no one was ever for a second taken in.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

“Never are voices so beautiful as on a winter's evening, when dusk almost hides the body, and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day.”

Virginia Woolf book Night and Day

Source: Night and Day

“If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now that in the time of the Pharaohs?”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

“But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was almost impossible to dislike anyone if one looked at them.”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

“At last she shut the book sharply, lay back, and drew a deep breath, expressive of the wonder which always marks the transition from the imaginary world to the real world.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“A million candles burnt in him without his being at the trouble of lighting a single one”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

“Whenever you see a board up with "Trespassers will be prosecuted," trespass at once.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“… But beauty must be broken daily to remain beautiful…”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

“What if I told you I’m incapable of tolerating my own heart?”

Virginia Woolf book Night and Day

Source: Night and Day

“… clumsiness is often mated with a love of solitude.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

“Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“The moment was all; the moment was enough.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

“The most important thing is not to think very much about oneself. To investigate candidly the charge; but not fussily, not very anxiously. On no account to retaliate by going to the other extreme -- thinking too much.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Source: A Writer's Diary

“How far do our feelings take their colour from the dive underground? I mean, what is the reality of any feeling?”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than to merely keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world's view of us.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

“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 (1882–1941) English writer

5 December 1919
A Moment's Liberty (1990)
Source: A Writer's Diary
Context: This last week L. has been having a little temperature in the evening, due to malaria, and that due to a visit to Oxford; a place of death and decay. I'm almost alarmed to see how entirely my weight rests on his prop. And almost alarmed to see how intensely I'm specialised. 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.

“Literature is no one’s private ground, literature is common ground; let us trespass freely and fearlessly and find our own way for ourselves.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer