1,646 Quotes by Virginia Woolf

Why did he sit so near and keep his eye on her? Why did they not have done with this searching and agony? Why did they not kiss each other simply? She wished to kiss him. But all the time she went on spinning out words.

For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

If I could believe, that I should grow old in pursuit and change, I should be rid of my fear: nothing persists. One moment does not lead to another.

For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately.

I like books whose virtue is all drawn together in a page or two. I like sentences that don't budge though armies cross them.

They lack suggestive power. And when a book lacks suggestive power, however hard it hits the surface of the mind it cannot penetrate within.

anyone who’s worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.

Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience (she accomplished here something dexterous with her needles) but as a wedge of darkness.

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