Virginia Woolf Quotes

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

- Virginia Woolf

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.

- Virginia Woolf

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The middlebrow is the man, or woman, of middlebred intelligence who ambles and saunters now on this side of the hedge, now on that, in pursuit of no single object, neither art itself nor life itself, but both mixed indistinguishably, and rather nastily, with money, fame, power, or prestige.

- Virginia Woolf

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It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.

- Virginia Woolf

To enjoy freedom, if the platitude is pardonable, we have of course to control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly, squirting half the house in order to water a single rose-bush; we must train them, exactly and powerfully, here on the very spot.

- Virginia Woolf

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

- Virginia Woolf

Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.

- Virginia Woolf

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

- Virginia Woolf

Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself.

- Virginia Woolf

When an arguer argues dispassionately he thinks only of the argument.

- Virginia Woolf

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

- Virginia Woolf

Why are women ... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

- Virginia Woolf

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The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.

- Virginia Woolf

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

- Virginia Woolf

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

- Virginia Woolf

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 mantlepiece forever.

- Virginia Woolf

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One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.

- Virginia Woolf