A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.
Virginia Woolf
Related I had never seen a woman in such despair before. It was worse than death, it was a constant longing ... PHILIPPA GREGORY What could the thing that was to happen to him be, after all, but just this thing that had begun to ... HENRY JAMES To me, it was fun, ... To them, it was a life-and-death career thing. FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA The rules only applied to people who couldn’t afford different rules. CAMERON STRACHER There was a tragic death of an uncle. HARRY SACHS There was neither death nor immortality then. There was not distinction of day or night. That alone ... RIG VEDA She called herself an angel, and wandered the world from girlhood till death. She lived every kind o... ROMAN PAYNE The passenger liner Ossifar Distana was one of the most luxurious of its kind in space anywhere. It ... CHRISTINA ENGELA It was a wonderful surprise. We did not know that Bertha had remembered the symphony in her will unt... CAROLYN VALACICH She had a personal relationship with Jesus. A real one. Even in her death that was very evident to u... BECKY HOLLAND The most ironic thing was that, the thing she valued the most was freedom. For according to her, hap... PRADNYA CHABBI He said that there was death and taxes, and taxes was worse, because at least death didn’t happen ... TERRY PRATCHETT It was great seeing him walk in. That was a life or death situation he was in. HOLLIS THOMAS It's the most ridiculous thing that only an idiot could believe. He didn't have a death wish. He had... PHILIP RUSSELL the deceased don’t want you to forget about them. They just want you to move past it; not to dwell... JUSTIN PYFROM My son was scared to death. I was so incredibly grateful that there was an administrator there and o... KATHY FOLEY If you wanted to tell stories, he could tell them into the night. I used to kid that every story he ... MARLIN FITZWATER While an ant was wandering under the shade of the tree of
Phaeton, a drop of amber enveloped the ti... MARCUS VALERIUS MARTIAL Instead, every precaution was taken not to violate his rights. Remember, many administrators have no... JAMES C. DOBSON When I arrived in France aged 20, I marched against the death penalty, which was an unpopular thing ... JANE BIRKIN So softly death succeeded life in her, She did but dream of heaven, and she was there JOHN DRYDEN There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest e... MARK TWAIN I believe she was murdered. I believe there was an argument. She was choked to death. GEORGE PATTERSON For some folks death is release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in th... NEIL GAIMAN While the victim in this case was involved in an illicit transaction, it does not mean that it was a... KIM OGG For us, it was never about death. It was about life. Knowing that there was a way out, and that his ... GAVIN EXTENCE Christ's grave was the birthplace of an indestructible belief that death is vanquished and there is ... ADOLPH HARNACK This did not in any way alter her intention of accomplishing her mission; on the contrary; it seemed... JANE BOWLES There was a chase. The chase came to an end. No one had fallen over. Nothing had happened that would... STEVEN AMSTER Everything, decided Francie after that first lecture, was vibrant with life and there was no death i... BETTY SMITH She was so far absorbed in this work, for it was really difficult to find how all these sounds shoul... NICOLE ARLYN Because there was only one thing worse than dying. And that was knowing you were going to die. And w... RICHARD MATHESON Paul's one thing was committing to forget about the past, to forge ahead into the future. CRAIG GROESCHEL He [Death] pulled a pure-black iPad from thin air. Death tapped the screen a few times and all Frank... RICK RIORDAN There was a mixture there and it was a rather pleasant mixture, and I think it helped him a lot in t... MICHAEL PALIN If Stephen King was a killer, he will be the best killer ever existed, check out his novels, check o... DEYTH BANGER The exhilaration of battle was agreeable to him, but the sight of the dead, with their clay faces, b... AMBROSE BIERCE He had learned well the law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back from a... JACK LONDON I wanted Death to talk in a way that humans don't speak. One thing I stood by [in the editing proces... MARKUS ZUSAK Birth and death: there was the same consciousness of heightened existence and of her own elevated im... J.K. ROWLING There was a lot they didn’t tell you about death, she had discovered, and one of the biggies was h... STEPHEN KING There is reason to believe that her death was a setback for his health. It was probably the last str... HANS KNOETZE And the day came out... the mask was removed... and who was behind it? ... No Face... a pe... DEYTH BANGER Stupidity isn't punishable by death. If it was, there would be a hell of a population drop. LAURELL K. HAMILTON stupidity isn’t punishable by death. If it was, there would be a hell of a population drop. LAURELL K. HAMILTON My father's death from prostate cancer in 1993 was tragic. He never complained about pain. He wa... ZOE WANAMAKER Mary was one who possessed power over her own spirit--rare gift, given to none but those who do some... GEORGE MACDONALD We don't know the cause of death, but there was a knocked-over propane lantern in the tent, which wa... DAVE BRENNAN I believe the death of Bobby Kennedy was in many ways the death of decency in America. I think it wa... EMILIO ESTEVEZ Although the man was involved in a violent fight with police, there was no obvious injury that would... WAYNE SHELOR And than suddenly he was there, charging down the hallway like death in a cowboy duster. RICHELLE MEAD And then, suddenly, he was there, charging down the hallway like Death in a cowboy duster. RICHELLE MEAD At the time of his death, he was not an employee of CBS-5 -- he was a former employee. AKILAH MONIFA We played bad defensively as a team. There was not one thing Marquette did differently in this game.... ANTONIO GRAVES Fresh in my mind now is how they tortured her to death, how terrified she looked prior to her death.... BOBBY SCHINDLER Birth actually seems like death to the one who is about to be born because in childbearing; there ar... ED BULEY The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE The bulkheads were close together, the ceilings low above their helmets. Not much space in there to ... CHRISTINA ENGELA 'Death at an Early Age' was about racial segregation in Boston. 'Illiterate America'... JONATHAN KOZOL If there was no such thing as death, men would scarcely live. The human race thrives on the fear of ... KIRPA RAI When I was a kid, I used to fantasize about death. Not that I was suicidal, but there was an attract... CONOR OBERST That kind of thing happens to black people every day in this country, and they don't receive tha... ISHMAEL REED Even in death, her mother was winning. NOORILHUDA [The last time he spoke with Bruce face-to-face was a few weeks ago at Bay Hill.] We talked about de... TOM WATSON Although it's great to appear to a feast, home is always sweet, though it may be lonely and cold lik... BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. To such an extent indeed that one day, finding myse... CLAUDE MONET Life insurance was created to be an instant estate in the event of the premature death of the breadw... HERB PERONE Can I ask a question, sir?" said Maurice, as Death turned to go. You May Not Get An Answer. TERRY PRATCHETT Jamestown with her wild train she as freely frequented, as her fathers habitation; and during the ti... JOHN SMITH Perhaps, in spite of all she had heard about the ideal of a perfect marriage, there was no such thin... LISA KLEYPAS I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common me... HENRY DAVID THOREAU I was tickled to death he got her back. It made my day. KENNY PRICE It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue f... PHILIP JOSé FARMER Apart from death and taxes, the one thing that's certain in this life is that I'll never be ... BRUCE DICKINSON Christ was treated as we deserve, that we might be treated as He deserves. He was condemned for our ... ELLEN G. WHITE Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been there, ... HARUKI MURAKAMI I had several near death experiences or very, you know, close calls, if you may, in Iraq. You know, ... FARNAZ FASSIHI Human stories are practically always about one thing, really, aren't they? Death. The inevitability ... J.R.R. TOLKIEN There was something twisting in his gut that he wanted to deny and couldn't. It was like a knife in ... HAZEL B. WEST He had the face of one who walks in his sleep, and for a wild moment the idea came to me that perhap... DAPHNE DU MAURIER L. Ram Saran Das was sentenced to death in 1915, and the sentence was later commuted to life transpo... BHAGAT SINGH All the heat there was seemed to concentrate in the Hons' cupboard, which was always stifling. Here ... NANCY MITFORD Bad business last night. Chances are, that would be all Graham had to say about the death of a man h... PATRICK ROTHFUSS There is no foul play suspected in his death. There's nothing to suggest that it was a suicide at th... ERIC MESSICK Something that I think I figured out slowly was if you're playing a show and there's a chatt... FEIST I wonder why he shot me? HUEY P. LONG, GOVERNOR IN LOUISIANA, WAS MURDERED. That the God-man died for his people, and that His death is their life, is an idea which was in some... WILLIAM ROBERTSON SMITH We don't believe it was a one-time thing. Before the boyfriend entered into the picture, this little... CARL BRIZZI As Caesar was at supper the discourse was of death - which sort was the best, "That," said he, "whic... PLUTARCH It was from an old friend who . thought he was dying. Anyway, he said, 'Life and death issues don't ... THOMAS ARNOLD It was from an old friend who . thought he was dying. Anyway, he said, Life and death issues don't c... THOMAS ARNOLD The body of the Word, then, being a real human body, in spite of its having been uniquely formed fro... ATHANASIUS OF ALEXANDRIA What made the process even harder was that there was so much talk about death. We just tried to get ... CLAUDIA MARK A long mission was ahead of them, and no one wanted to get on anyone else's nerves with unnecessary ... ALLEN STEELE The report of my death was an exaggeration. MARK TWAIN I got to the point where the vampire began describing his brother's death, and the whole thing just ... ANNE RICE I felt blessed. That's a hard thing to say that having cancer is a blessing, but I was blessed and h... LARRY WILLIAMSON But she had nothing. She had forbidden music. Grating her fingers in the bark, she damned the audien... VIRGINIA WOOLF And for his diet, there was a continual diet given him of the king of Babylon, every day a portion u... BIBLE He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct... JACK LONDON
More Virginia Woolf
Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. VIRGINIA WOOLF Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in c... VIRGINIA WOOLF One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as w... VIRGINIA WOOLF Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends c... VIRGINIA WOOLF I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It exp... VIRGINIA WOOLF Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and t... VIRGINIA WOOLF Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art. VIRGINIA WOOLF Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded. VIRGINIA WOOLF It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. VIRGINIA WOOLF Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is writ... VIRGINIA WOOLF As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world. VIRGINIA WOOLF It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or... VIRGINIA WOOLF The interest in life does not lie in what people do, nor even in their relations to each other, but ... VIRGINIA WOOLF So the days pass, and I ask myself whether one is not hypnotized, as a child by a silver globe, by l... VIRGINIA WOOLF For love... has two faces; one white, the other black; two bodies; one smooth, the other hairy. It h... VIRGINIA WOOLF Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all ... VIRGINIA WOOLF All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point VIRGINIA WOOLF Novels so often provide an anodyne and not an antidote, glide one into torpid slumbers instead of ro... VIRGINIA WOOLF Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written ... VIRGINIA WOOLF I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again -- as I always am when I... VIRGINIA WOOLF We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print. VIRGINIA WOOLF Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death! VIRGINIA WOOLF It is no use trying to sum people up. One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entir... VIRGINIA WOOLF The older one grows, the more one likes indecency. VIRGINIA WOOLF Now, aged 50, I'm just poised to shoot forth quite free straight and undeflected my bolts whatever t... VIRGINIA WOOLF At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials. VIRGINIA WOOLF These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect t... VIRGINIA WOOLF It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. VIRGINIA WOOLF If we help an educated man's daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not abo... VIRGINIA WOOLF Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others. VIRGINIA WOOLF My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring... VIRGINIA WOOLF We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by fi... VIRGINIA WOOLF I feel certain that I'm going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times.... VIRGINIA WOOLF As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world. VIRGINIA WOOLF What is amusing now had to be taken in desperate earnest once. VIRGINIA WOOLF It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and... VIRGINIA WOOLF My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery --always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring... VIRGINIA WOOLF It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if... VIRGINIA WOOLF If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure -- the relationship so secret and private compa... VIRGINIA WOOLF Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of... VIRGINIA WOOLF Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women? VIRGINIA WOOLF All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority an... VIRGINIA WOOLF Different though the sexes are, they inter-mix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to t... VIRGINIA WOOLF But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking? The entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in,... VIRGINIA WOOLF It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handlin... VIRGINIA WOOLF Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art. VIRGINIA WOOLF Inevitably we look upon society, so kind to you, so harsh to us, as an ill-fitting form that distort... VIRGINIA WOOLF Every face, every shop, bedroom window, public-house, and dark square is a picture feverishly turned... VIRGINIA WOOLF The current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the poli... VIRGINIA WOOLF That great Cathedral space which was childhood. VIRGINIA WOOLF The word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping. VIRGINIA WOOLF Young women... you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of an... VIRGINIA WOOLF Therefore if you insist upon fighting to protect me, or VIRGINIA WOOLF When the body escaped mutilation, seldom did the heart go to the grave unscarred. VIRGINIA WOOLF We all indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it comes to saying, even t... VIRGINIA WOOLF Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human... VIRGINIA WOOLF The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to fol... VIRGINIA WOOLF If we help an educated man's daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about e... VIRGINIA WOOLF A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in t... VIRGINIA WOOLF One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than whe... VIRGINIA WOOLF The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind. VIRGINIA WOOLF Boredom is the legitimate kingdom of the philanthropic. VIRGINIA WOOLF It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with... VIRGINIA WOOLF To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves. VIRGINIA WOOLF Henry James seems most entirely in his element, doing that is to say what everything favors his doin... VIRGINIA WOOLF No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. VIRGINIA WOOLF As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking. VIRGINIA WOOLF When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing. VIRGINIA WOOLF If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people. VIRGINIA WOOLF I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It exp... VIRGINIA WOOLF Books are the mirrors of the soul. VIRGINIA WOOLF I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, re... VIRGINIA WOOLF To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father. VIRGINIA WOOLF Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the... VIRGINIA WOOLF Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever ... VIRGINIA WOOLF Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the... VIRGINIA WOOLF Melancholy were the sounds on a winter's night. VIRGINIA WOOLF Women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems. VIRGINIA WOOLF The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages. VIRGINIA WOOLF Yet Byron never made tea as you do, who fill the pot so that when you put the lid on the tea spills ... VIRGINIA WOOLF Just in case you ever foolishly forget; I'm never not thinking of you. VIRGINIA WOOLF One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. VIRGINIA WOOLF Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of... VIRGINIA WOOLF A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her c... VIRGINIA WOOLF The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as s... VIRGINIA WOOLF But it is just when opinions universally prevail and we have added lip service to their authority th... VIRGINIA WOOLF The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only... VIRGINIA WOOLF Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. VIRGINIA WOOLF There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intell... VIRGINIA WOOLF I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and w... VIRGINIA WOOLF I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure. VIRGINIA WOOLF Thus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before... VIRGINIA WOOLF Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our c... VIRGINIA WOOLF Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. VIRGINIA WOOLF Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary, and ought to be subst... VIRGINIA WOOLF Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death... ... VIRGINIA WOOLF When a subject is highly controversial... one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how o... VIRGINIA WOOLF I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locke... VIRGINIA WOOLF Most of a modest woman's life was spent, after all, in denying what, in one day at least of every ye... VIRGINIA WOOLF Life for both sexes is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and s... VIRGINIA WOOLF As the streets that lead from the Strand to the Embankment are very narrow, it is better not to walk... VIRGINIA WOOLF Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the art of cre... VIRGINIA WOOLF Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can on... VIRGINIA WOOLF For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in com... VIRGINIA WOOLF Tom's great yellow bronze mask all draped upon an iron framework. An inhibited, nerve-drawn; dropped... VIRGINIA WOOLF Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame. VIRGINIA WOOLF A strange thing has happened -- while all the other arts were born naked, this, the youngest, has be... VIRGINIA WOOLF There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them; we may make them ... VIRGINIA WOOLF Humor is the first gift to perish in a foreign language. VIRGINIA WOOLF Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still posse... VIRGINIA WOOLF For such will be our ruin if you, in the immensity of your public abstractions, forget the private f... VIRGINIA WOOLF What I like, or one of the things I like, about motoring is the sense it gives one of lighting accid... VIRGINIA WOOLF Those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, euphemistically, as the stately homes of E... VIRGINIA WOOLF If we didn't live venturously, plucking the wild goat by the beard, and trembling over precipices, w... VIRGINIA WOOLF What is meant by reality? It would seem to be something very erratic, very undependable -- now to be... VIRGINIA WOOLF One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats --and one always secret... VIRGINIA WOOLF Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends. VIRGINIA WOOLF Every season is likeable, and wet days and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even slee... VIRGINIA WOOLF The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only... VIRGINIA WOOLF In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us. VIRGINIA WOOLF Life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning. VIRGINIA WOOLF The first duty of a lecturer--to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap u... VIRGINIA WOOLF It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality VIRGINIA WOOLF The first duty of a lecturer is to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap... VIRGINIA WOOLF Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women? VIRGINIA WOOLF The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story o... VIRGINIA WOOLF All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority an... VIRGINIA WOOLF A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. VIRGINIA WOOLF Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation. VIRGINIA WOOLF It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. VIRGINIA WOOLF Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeate... VIRGINIA WOOLF This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to... VIRGINIA WOOLF On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points. VIRGINIA WOOLF When the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning, it satisfies the senses amazing... VIRGINIA WOOLF Language is wine upon the lips. VIRGINIA WOOLF Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry. VIRGINIA WOOLF A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it mu... VIRGINIA WOOLF Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the fi... VIRGINIA WOOLF Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue. VIRGINIA WOOLF Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figu... VIRGINIA WOOLF It seems as if an age of genius must be succeeded by an age of endeavour; riot and extravagance by c... VIRGINIA WOOLF One must love everything. VIRGINIA WOOLF How then did it work out, all this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this... VIRGINIA WOOLF The beauty of the world, which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish,... VIRGINIA WOOLF You cannot find peace by avoiding life. VIRGINIA WOOLF Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at... VIRGINIA WOOLF These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one... VIRGINIA WOOLF Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparen... VIRGINIA WOOLF Arrange whatever pieces come your way. VIRGINIA WOOLF Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bag... VIRGINIA WOOLF It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman manly, or a man womanly. VIRGINIA WOOLF One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than... VIRGINIA WOOLF He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life. VIRGINIA WOOLF When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman se... VIRGINIA WOOLF It flattered her, where she was most susceptible of flattery, to think how, wound about in their hea... VIRGINIA WOOLF Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their ... VIRGINIA WOOLF To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want a... VIRGINIA WOOLF For this moment, this one moment, we are together. I press you to me. Come, pain, feed on me. Bury y... VIRGINIA WOOLF For most of history, Anonymous was a woman. VIRGINIA WOOLF The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like ... VIRGINIA WOOLF I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. VIRGINIA WOOLF Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often ... VIRGINIA WOOLF The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty obser... VIRGINIA WOOLF Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all g... VIRGINIA WOOLF I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am roo... VIRGINIA WOOLF It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people ... VIRGINIA WOOLF It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning. VIRGINIA WOOLF One might fancy that day, the London day, was just beginning. Like a woman who had slipped off her p... VIRGINIA WOOLF I rise from my worst disasters, I turn, I change. VIRGINIA WOOLF As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole worl... VIRGINIA WOOLF How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the sol... VIRGINIA WOOLF Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life. VIRGINIA WOOLF What does the brain matter compared with the heart? VIRGINIA WOOLF Often on a wet day I begin counting up; what I've read and what I haven't read. VIRGINIA WOOLF Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others. VIRGINIA WOOLF If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure -- the relationship so secret and private com... VIRGINIA WOOLF I have lost friends, some by death... others through sheer inability to cross the street. VIRGINIA WOOLF I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual. VIRGINIA WOOLF Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of... VIRGINIA WOOLF The beautiful seems right by force of beauty, and the feeble wrong because of weakness. VIRGINIA WOOLF If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or 'our' country, let it be understood soberly an... VIRGINIA WOOLF Friendships, even the best of them, are frail things. One drifts apart. VIRGINIA WOOLF I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you're everything that exists; the reality o... VIRGINIA WOOLF The beauty of the world...has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. VIRGINIA WOOLF I am rooted, but I flow. VIRGINIA WOOLF When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they? VIRGINIA WOOLF Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. VIRGINIA WOOLF The most important thing is not to think very much about oneself. To investigate candidly the charge... VIRGINIA WOOLF One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats - and one always se... VIRGINIA WOOLF I read the book of Job last night, I don't think God comes out well in it. VIRGINIA WOOLF The hatchet must fall on the block; the oak must be cleft to the centre. The weight of the world is ... VIRGINIA WOOLF If one is to deal with people on a large scale and say what one thinks, how can one avoid melancholy... VIRGINIA WOOLF With stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and wild violets—what nonsense was he ... VIRGINIA WOOLF Happiness is in the quiet, ordinary things. A table, a chair, a book with a paper-knife stuck betwee... VIRGINIA WOOLF Yes, I deserve a spring–I owe nobody nothing. VIRGINIA WOOLF One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtl... VIRGINIA WOOLF What I value is the naked contact of a mind. VIRGINIA WOOLF Whatever may be their use in civilized societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic ac... VIRGINIA WOOLF All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense ... VIRGINIA WOOLF To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is...at last,... VIRGINIA WOOLF