Quotes from Virginia Woolf

Gli occhi degli altri sono le nostre prigioni, i loro pensieri le nostre gabbie.

Sir, I would trust you with my heart. Moreover, we have left our bodies in the banqueting hall. Those on the turf are the shadows of our souls.

Così si potrebbe sostenere con qualche ragione che sono gli abiti che portano noi, e non noi che portiamo gli abiti; noi possiamo far sì che essi modellino perbene un braccio, o il petto, ma essi modellano il nostro cuore, i nostri cervelli, le nostre lingue a piacer loro.

Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves.

my country is the world

Todo puede suceder cuando la feminidad ya no sea una ocupación protegida.

Essa rua espalhafatosa, alvoroçada e vulgar lembra-nos que a vida é uma luta; que toda construção é perecível; que toda exibição é vaidade.

Ma la bellezza non era tutto. La bellezza aveva questo guaio: veniva troppo immediatamente, veniva troppo completamente. Fermava la vita - la gelava. Ci si dimenticava le piccole agitazioni; l'arrossire, il pallore, qualche strana distorsione, qualche luce o ombra, che rendeva per un momento riconoscibile la faccia e tuttavia le dava una qualità che in seguito si vedeva per sempre.

Virginia Woolf had to ask herself "How can one weigh and shape dialogue till each sentence tears the shingles in the bottom of the reader's soul?

Jacob! Jacob! cried Bonamy, standing by the window. The leaves sank down again. Such confusion everywhere! exclaimed Betty Flanders, bursting open the bedroom door. Bonamy turned away from the window. What am I to do with these, Mr. Bonamy? She held out a pair of Jacob's old shoes.

Me produce un gran placer estar sola […] elimino el dolor que me produce la gente. Quizás sea el placer más fuerte que conozco.

Even if one could state the value of any one gift at the moment, those values will change; in a century's time very possibly they will have changed completely.

Mrs. Jarvis, as she came out of the Rectory gate, saw him coming, and her Newfoundland dog, Nero, slowly swept his tail from side to side.

A steel-blue plume from one of them fell among the heather. She loved wild birds' feathers. She had used to collect them as a boy. She picked it up and stuck it in her hat.

We love each other, Terence repeated, searching into her face. Their faces were both very pale and quiet, and they said nothing. He was afraid to kiss her again. By degrees she drew close to him, and rested against him. In this position they sat for some time. She said Terence once; he answered Rachel.

It's life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering—the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself at all.

And there is a dignity in people; a solitude; even between husband and wife a gulf; and that one must respect, thought Clarissa, watching him open the door; for one would not part with it oneself, or take it, against his will, from one's husband, without losing one's independence, one's self-respect—something, after all, priceless.

But the noise! she said. The noise! The sign of a successful party.

With every word the mist which had enveloped them, making them seem unreal to each other, since the previous afternoon melted a little further, and their contact became more and more natural. Up through the sultry southern landscape they saw the world they knew appear clearer and more vividly than it had ever appeared before.

I have felt that odd whirr of wings in the head.

Each of the ladies, being after the fashion of their sex, highly trained in promoting men's talk without listening to it, could think—about the education of children, about the use of fog sirens in an opera—without betraying herself. Only it struck Helen that Rachel was perhaps too still for a hostess, and that she might have done something with her hands.

upon the obstinate irrepressible conviction which makes youth so intolerably disagreeable—I am what I am, and intend to be it

Chiudete a doppia mandata le vostre biblioteche, se volete; ma non c'è nessun cancello, nessun lucchetto, nessun catenaccio che potete mettere alla libertà della mia mente.

La indiferencia del mundo, que Keats, Flaubert y otros han encontrado tan difícil de soportar, en el caso de la mujer no era indiferencia, sino hostilidad. El mundo no le decía a ella como les decía a ellos: Escribe si quieres; a mí no me importa. El mundo le decía burlándose: ¿Escribir? ¿Para qué quieres tú escribir?.