1,646 Quotes by Virginia Woolf

As for himself, when he went to go to a party, as one was sometimes obliged to, from a wish not to give offence, he walked into the middle of the room, said 'Ha! Ha!' as loud as ever he could, considered he had done his duty, and went home.

It was a great mistake to have come. He should have stayed at home and read his book, thought Peter Walsh; should have gone to a music hall; he should have stayed at home, for he knew no one.

Oh! thought Clarissa, in the middle of my party, here’s death, she thought.

Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in it's place?

It's too short,' she said, 'ever so much too short.' Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, half-way down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waters swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad.

I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun.

But love – don’t we all talk a great deal of nonsense about it? What does one mean? ... It’s only a story one makes up in one’s mind about another person, and one knows all the time it isn’t true. Of course one knows; why, one’s always taking care not to destroy the illusion.

It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

If you drink the good wine of the noble countess, you have to entertain her less desirable friends.