1,646 Quotes by Virginia Woolf

[W]e cease to be soldiers in the army of the upright; we become deserters. They march to battle. We float with the sticks on the stream; helter-skelter with the dead leaves on the lawn, irresponsible and disinterested and able, perhaps for the first time for years, to look round, to look up—to look, for example, at the sky.

It flattered her, where she was most susceptible of flattery, to think how, wound about in their hearts, however long they lived she would be woven...

Books, she thought, grew of themselves. She never had time to read them. Alas! even the books that had been given her, and inscribed by the hand of the poet himself: 'For her whose wishes must be obeyed' ... 'The happier Helen of our day' ... disgraceful to say, she had never read them.

Is it permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies ow men will think of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years?

Habits and customs are a convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow their souls free play.

Bien des choses se sont détachées de moi. J'ai survécu à certain désirs; j'ai perdu des amis, les uns par la mort, d'autres par ma simple incapacité à traverser la rue.

Bien des choses se sont détachées de moi. J'ai survécu à certains désirs; j'ai perdu des amis, les uns par la mort, d'autres par ma simple incapacité à traverser la rue.

and even a tea party means apprehension, breakage

Those ruffians, the Gods, shan't have it all their own way,-- her notion being that the Gods, who never lost a chance of hurting, thwarting and spoiling human lives were seriously put out if, all the same, you behaved like a lady.