1,646 Quotes by Virginia Woolf

She had done the usual trick-been nice. She would never know him. He would never know her. Human relations were all like that, she thought, and the worst were between men and women. Inevitably these were extremely insincere.

And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends. (...) almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. (...) [women in fiction were] not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman's life is that

Por diferentes que sean los sexos, se entremezclan. En todo ser humano hay una vacilación de un sexo al otro, y a menudo es sólo la ropa lo que mantiene la apariencia masculina o femenina, mientras que por debajo el sexo es lo contrario de lo que es por encima. De las complicaciones y confusiones resultantes todo el mundo ha tenido experiencia

She was like a bird for speed, an arrow for directness.

Se sconsideratezza è l’avventurarsi disarmati nell’antro di un leone, sconsideratezza avventurarsi sull’Atlantico in una barca a remi, sconsideratezza fare la cicogna sulla cupola di St Paul, più sconsiderato ancora è tornarsene a casa sole in compagnia di un poeta. Un poeta è insieme Atlantico e leone. Se sfuggi alle zanne, soccombi ai flutti. Un uomo capace di distruggere le illusioni è al tempo stesso belva e onda. 

she was a pioneer, a stray, venturing, trusting.

She wore ear-rings, and a silver-green mermaid's dress. Lolloping on the waves and braiding her tresses she seemed, having that gift still; to be; to exist; to sum it all up in the moment as she passed; turned, caught her scarf in some other woman's dress, unhitched it, laughed, all with the most perfect ease and air of a creature floating in its element. But age had brushed her; even as a mermaid might behold in her glass the setting sun on some very clear evening over the waves.

(...) purely feminine; with that extraordinary gift, that woman's gift, of making a world of her own wherever she happened to be.

I ask, if I shall never see you again and fix my eyes on that solidity, what form will our communication take? You have gone across the court, further and further, drawing finer and finer the thread between us. But you exist somewhere. Something of you remains.