1,646 Quotes by Virginia Woolf

This one night we will be mad — dance lightly — raise our hearts as the beat strengthens, grows buoyant — careless, defiant. What matters anything so long as ones step is in time — so long as one’s whole body & mind are dancing too — what shall end it?

And her old Uncle William used to say a lady is known byher shoes and her gloves.

In your modesty you seem to consider that writers are of different blood and bone from yourselves; that they know more of Mrs Brown than you do. Never was there a more fatal mistake. It is this division between reader and writer, this humility on your part, these professional airs and graces on ours, that corrupt and emasculate the books which should be the healthy offspring of a close and equal alliance between us.

Life for both sexes... is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority ... over other people.

What I value is the naked contact of a mind.

Los trajes no son otra cosa que símbolos de algo escondido muy adentro.

The lake of my mind, unbroken by oars, heaves placidly and soon sinks into an oily somnolence.’ That will be useful.

I can’t imagine anything nicer than to sit out in the moonlight and listen to music—

Music, you see' -- she shifted her eyes, and became less desirable as her brain began to work, inflicting a change upon her face -- 'music goes straight for things. It says all there is to say at once. With writing it seems to me there's so much' -- she paused for an expression, and rubbed her fingers in the earth -- 'scratching on the match-box.