„If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.“
"The Leaning Tower", lecture delivered to the Workers' Educational Association, Brighton (May 1940)
The Moment and Other Essays (1948)
Virginia Woolf quotes
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Virginia Woolf
Birthdate: 25. January 1882
Date of death: 28. March 1941
Other names: Adeline Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer who is considered one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century, and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Born in an affluent household in Kensington, London, she attended the King's College London and was acquainted with the early reformers of women's higher education.
Having been home-schooled for most part of her childhood, mostly in English classics and Victorian literature, Woolf began writing professionally in 1900. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. She published her first novel titled The Voyage Out in 1915, through the Hogarth Press, a publishing house that she established with her husband, Leonard Woolf. Her best-known works include the novels Mrs Dalloway , To the Lighthouse and Orlando , and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own , with its dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
Woolf became one of the central subjects of the 1970s movement of feminist criticism, and her works have since garnered much attention and widespread commentary for "inspiring feminism", an aspect of her writing that was unheralded earlier. Her works are widely read all over the world and have been translated into more than fifty languages. She suffered from severe bouts of mental illness throughout her life and took her own life by drowning in 1941 at the age of 59.
Photo: George Charles Beresford, Filippo Venturi Photography Blog / Public domain
Works
A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf
To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf
Between the Acts
Virginia Woolf
The Voyage Out
Virginia Woolf
Night and Day
Virginia Woolf
The Years
Virginia Woolf
Moments of Being
Virginia Woolf
A Letter to a Young Poet
Virginia Woolf
Monday or Tuesday
Virginia WoolfQuotes Virginia Woolf
— Virginia Woolf, book To the Lighthouse
Source: To the Lighthouse
„Life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay said.“
— Virginia Woolf, book Mrs Dalloway
Part III, Ch. 3
To the Lighthouse (1927)
Source: Mrs. Dalloway
Context: "Like a work of art," she repeated, looking from her canvas to the drawing-room steps and back again. She must rest for a moment. And, resting, looking from one to the other vaguely, the old question which transversed the sky of the soul perpetually, the vast, the general question which was apt to particularise itself at such moments as these, when she released faculties that had been on the strain, stood over her, paused over her, darkened over her. What is the meaning of life? That was all — a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other; herself and Charles Tansley and the breaking wave; Mrs. Ramsay bringing them together; Mrs. Ramsay saying, "Life stand still here"; Mrs. Ramsay making of the moment something permanent (as in another sphere Lily herself tried to make of the moment something permanent) — this was of the nature of a revelation. In the midst of chaos there was shape; this eternal passing and flowing (she looked at the cloud going and the leaves shaking) was struck into stability. Life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay said. "Mrs. Ramsay! Mrs. Ramsay!" she repeated. She owed it all to her.
„Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder.
I sob, I sob.“
— Virginia Woolf, book The Waves
Source: The Waves
„And you wish to be a poet; and you wish to be a lover.“
— Virginia Woolf, book The Waves
Source: The Waves
— Virginia Woolf, book A Room of One's Own
Variant: There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.
Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 4, p. 90
— Virginia Woolf, book A Room of One's Own
Source: A Room of One's Own
„As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.“
— Virginia Woolf, book Orlando: A Biography
Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 6
„Books are the mirrors of the soul.“
— Virginia Woolf, book Between the Acts
Source: Between the Acts
„All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.“
— Virginia Woolf, book Orlando: A Biography
Source: Orlando
