Virginia Woolf Quotes, Wall Quotes, Writing Quotes

I'm fundamentally, I think, an outsider. I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It's an odd feeling though, writing aginst the current: difficult entirely to disregard the current. Yet of course I shall.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Wall Quotes , Writing Quotes

I enjoy almost everything. Yet I have some restless searcher in me. Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay hands on and say “This is it”? My depression is a harassed feeling. I’m looking: but that’s not it — that’s not it. What is it? And shall I die before I find it?

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Discovery Quotes , Hands Quotes

Theories then are dangerous things.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Theory Quotes , Dangerous Quotes

As a creator of character his peculiarity is that he creates wherever his eyes rest ... With such a power at his command Dickens made his books blaze up, not by tightening the plot or sharpening the wit, but by throwing another handful of people upon the fire.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Book Quotes , Character Quotes

Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That was how Shakespeare wrote, I thought, looking at Antony and Cleopatra; and when people compare Shakespeare and Jane Austen, they may mean that the minds of both had consumed all impediments; and for that reason we do not know Jane Austen and we do not know Shakespeare, and for that reason Jane Austen pervades every word that she wrote, and so does Shakespeare.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Hate Quotes , Writing Quotes

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Courage Quotes , Mean Quotes

Wine has a drastic, an astringent taste. I cannot help wincing as I drink. Ascent of flowers, radiance and heat, are distilled here to a fiery, yellow liquid. Just behind my shoulder-blades some dry thing, wide-eyed, gently closes, gradually lulls itself to sleep. This is rapture. This is relief.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Flower Quotes , Wine Quotes

Lines slip easily down the accustomed grooves. The old designs are copied so glibly that we are half inclined to think them original, save for that very glibness.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Design Quotes

A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Writing Quotes , Quality Quotes

Writing is still like heaving bricks over a wall.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Wall Quotes , Writing Quotes

I like people to be unhappy because I like them to have souls.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , People Quotes , Soul Quotes

Incessant company is as bad as solitary confinement.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Incessant Quotes , Solitary Quotes

Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely? All this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Believe Quotes , Goes On Quotes

Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Simple Quotes , Style Quotes

I will achieve in my life - Heaven grant that it be not long - some gigantic amalgamation between the two discrepancies so hideously apparent to me. Out of my suffering I will do it. I will knock. I will enter.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Two Quotes , Long Quotes

Travelers are much at the mercy of phrases ... vast generalizations formulate in their exposed brains.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Brain Quotes , Phrases Quotes

As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Country Quotes

The best letters of our time are precisely those that can never be published.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Letters Quotes

Young women... you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays by Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse?

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Women Quotes , Army Quotes

...she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.

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Tags : Virginia Woolf Quotes , Feelings Quotes , One Day Quotes