Quotes from Virginia Woolf

É sempre uma aventura entrar num espaço desconhecido, porque a vida e a personalidade dos que o ocupam vão infundindo nele as suas características, de tal modo que, assim que entramos, passamos a respirar novas formas de emoção.

Perhaps, though, these words from her essay "How Should One Read a Book?" are our best guide: "The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.

How he wrote and it seemed good; read and it seemed vile; corrected and tore up; cut out; put in; was in ecstasy; in despair; had good nights and bad mornings... and could not decide whether he was the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world.

Is it the lot of average human being, however, he asked himself, the criterion by which we judge the measure of civilization?

Those ruffians, the Gods, shan't have it all their own way, - her notion being that the Gods, who never lost a chance of hurting, thwarting and spoiling human lives were seriously put out if, all the same, you behaved like a lady.

Mr. Carmichael, who was basking with his yellow cat's eyes ajar, so that like a cat's they seemed to reflect the branches moving or the clouds passing, but to give no inkling of any inner thoughts or emotion whatsoever, if he wanted anything.

What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa, he said. For there she was.

But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.

They have been written in the red light of emotion and not in the white light of truth.

People were beginning to compare her to poplar trees, early dawn, hyacinths, fawns, running water, and garden lilies, and it made her life a burden to her, for she so much preferred being left alone to do what she liked in the country, but they would compare her to lilies, and she had to go to parties, and London was so dreary compared with being alone in the country with her father and the dogs.

Knowledge comes through suffering.

All human beings were laid asleep—prone, horizontal, dumb.

There has fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate. She is coming, my dove, my dear; She is coming, my life, my fate; The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near'; And the white rose weeps, 'She is late'; The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear'; And the lily whispers, 'I wait.

To be them would be marvelous, but she was condemned to be herself and could only in this silent enthusiastic way, sitting outside in a garden, applaud the society of humanity from which she was excluded.

The very reason why that poetry excites one to such abandonment, such rapture, is that it celebrates some feeling that one used to have (at luncheon parties before the war perhaps), so that one responds easily, familiarly, without troubling to check the feeling, or to compare it with any that one has now.

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?

bir kad?n eÄŸer kurmaca yazacaksa, paras? ve kendine ait bir odas? olmal?d?r; ve göreceÄŸiniz gibi bu, kad?n?n gerçek doÄŸas?na ve kurmacan?n gerçek doÄŸas?na dair büyük sorunu çözümsüz b?rakmakta.

He ran his mind over the things they had said, the random, unnecessary things which had eddied round and round and used up all the time, and drawn them so close together and flung them so far apart and left him in the end unsatisfied, ignorant still of what she felt and of what she was like. What was the use of talking, talking, merely talking?

Mai nessuno era parso così triste. Amara e nera, a metà strada, nelle tenebre, nel raggio che portava dal sole all'abisso, forse si formò una lacrima; una lacrima cadde; le acque ondeggiavano, la accolsero e si richiusero quietamente. Mai nessuno era parso così triste.

and let there be new forms and stranger

And the widow bird, startled, flew away, describing wider and wider circles until it became (what she called her soul) remote as a crow which has been startled up into the air by a stone thrown at it.

he lei rispettasse e venerasse come rispettava e venerava lui. Era prontissima a fidarsi di quel che diceva lui, rispose. […] andavano da lei, spontaneamente, perché lei era una donna, tutto il giorno, con questa o quella richiesta; uno voleva una cosa, un altro un'altra; i ragazzi crescevano; a volte le sembrava di non essere altro che una spugna imbevuta di emozioni umane.

Flinging himself from his horse, he made, in his rage, as if he would breast the flood. Standing knee-deep in water he hurled at the faithless woman all the insults that have ever been the lot of her sex. Faithless, mutable, fickle, he called her; devil, adulteress, deceiver; and the swirling waters took his words, and tossed at his feet a broken pot and a little straw.

What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years.