xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“Thoughts are divine.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

“It is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in time to it along the road.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

“But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

“But why do I notice everything? She thought. Why must I think? She did not want to think. She wanted to force her mind to become a blank and lie back, and accept quietly, tolerantly, whatever came.”

Virginia Woolf book The Years

Source: The Years

“My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Source: Selected Letters

“Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

“They can because they think they can.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book V

“I do not want to be admired. I want to give, to be given, and solitude in which to unfold my possessions.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

“And yet, the only exciting life is the imaginary one.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“Our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by.”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

“She read everything.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“anyone who’s worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.”

Virginia Woolf book Jacob's Room

Variant: But then anyone who's worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.
Source: Jacob's Room

“The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“some we know to be dead even though they walk among us; some are not yet born though they go through all the forms of life; other are hundreds of years old though they call themselves thirty-six”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

“Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 2, p. 26

“Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

“These moments of escape are not to be despised. They come too seldom.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

“Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

“Still, life had a way of adding day to day”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Variant: Still, one got over things. Still, life had a way of adding day to day.
Source: Mrs. Dalloway

“Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer