Quotes About Woolf

Those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known euphemistically as the stately homes of England.

Previously, Woolf attributed her depressive states to her terrible, humiliating experiences of sexual molestation. But if she followed Freud's theories, then there had to be other explanations. Perhaps her memories were distorted, not to say false; perhaps they were a reflection not of actual experience but of the projection of her own desires. Perhaps, in short, the whole business had been a product of her imagination.2 I

A game to write a persuasive opening sentence for a book they have never read (this is difficult, as these diligent students have read everything) leads to a chilling start to Woolf's The Waves: I was too far out in the ocean to hear the lifeguard shouting, "Shark! Shark!

The beauty of the world…has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. —Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (part 3, Pretties)

The beauty of the world . . . has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. —Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

He is limp and damp and milder than the breath of a cow.

Venerable are letters, infinitely brave, forlorn, and lost.

I should never be able to fulfill what is,I understand, the first duty of a lecturer-to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece forever.

Sir William said he never spoke of 'madness'; he called it not having a sense of proportion.

Literature had taken possession even of her memories. She was matching him, presumably, with certain characters in the old novels...

I am the guardian of the sleeping fawn; the snow is dear to me; and the moon rising; and the silver sea.

And the supreme mystery was simply this: here was one room; there another. Did religion solve that, or love?

She was singing] a senseless singsong, so that several park keepers looked at her with suspicion and were only brought to a favorable opinion of her sanity by noticing the pearl necklace she wore.

Nature, who has played so many queer tricks upon us, making us so unequally of clay and diamonds...

Lord, lord, the snobbery of the English!

Poor little place,' he murmured with a sigh. She heard him. He said the most melancholy things, but she noticed that directly he had said them he always seemed more cheerful than usual. All this phrase-making was a game, she thought, for if she had said half what he said, she would have blown her brains out by now.

She did in her own heart infinitely prefer boobies to clever men who wrote dissertations.

It is the speed, the hot, molten effect, the lava flow of sentence into sentence that I need.

That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library.

Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art.

There is little blood in my arm, Isabella repeated.

Unhappiness is everywhere; just beyond the door; or stupidity, which is worse

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

That was her feeling - Othello's feeling, and she felt it, she was convinced, as strongly as Shakespeare meant Othello to feel it, all because she was coming down to dinner in a white frock to meet Sally Seton!