26 Quotes by Leonard Woolf

There is nothing to be said except about the sheer waste and futility of it all. It is the war all over again, when one is rung up to be told that Rupert was dead, or that one's brother was killed, and one knew that it was only to produce the kind of world we are living in now. Horrible.

Nothing matters. You get yourself into a state in which you imagine things which have no basis in reality... One begins for some reason to worry about something and, if one allows oneself to go on doing that, one gradually imagines all kinds of things. It is a kind of self-indulgence and one gets into a perpetual daydream. It is essential to stop this process and face the real world -- which is never so bad as all that.

Nothing matters.

The mere fact that a very large number of people believe such a thing and that the world would be a better place if it were true, is no reason for believing that it is true.

The fact is, I find it extremely difficult to force myself to read old letters... Whenever one really knows the facts, one finds that what is accepted by contemporaries or posterity as the truth about them is so distorted or out of focus that it is not worth worrying about.

I see clearly that I have achieved practically nothing.

Nothing matters, and everything matters.

The grinding of the intellect is for most people as painful as a dentists drill.

Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to remain a civilized man.