1,646 Quotes by Virginia Woolf

But china is seldom thrown from a great height; it is one of the rarest of human actions. You have to find in conjunction a very high house, and a woman of such reckless impulse and passionate prejudice that she flings her jar or pot straight from the window without thought of who is below.

The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long life seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the clammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have triumphed. ..

All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.

But when we sit together, close,’ said Bernard, ‘we melt into each other with phrases. We are edged with mist. We make an unsubstantial territory.

I burn, I shiver, out of this sun, into this shadow.

Todo ese tiempo, es claro, habían conversado agradablemente, como lo hace la gente educada y bien nacida, sobre el mal genio de la reina, y la gota del primer ministro.

La conversación más vulgar es a menudo la más poética, y la más poética es precisamente la que no se puede escribir.

Little Mr. Bowley, who had rooms in the Albany and was sealed with wax over the deeper sources of life but could be unsealed suddenly, inappropriately, sentimentally, by this sort of thing––poor women waiting to see the Queen go past––poor women, nice little children, orphans, widows, the War––tut tut––actually had tears in his eyes.

To whom can I expose the urgency of my own passion?…There is nobody—here among these grey arches, and moaning pigeons, and cheerful games and tradition and emulation, all so skilfully organised to prevent feeling alone.