I often wish I'd got on better with your father,' he said. But he never liked anyone who--our friends,' said Clarissa; and could have bitten her tongue for thus reminding Peter that he had wanted to marry her. Of course I did, thought Peter; it almost broke my heart too, he thought; and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken day. I was more unhappy than I've ever been since, he thought. And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. There above them it hung, that moon. She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight.
Virginia Woolf
Related Peter," she began. He looked up at her, and she could see the pain in his eyes. "I love you," she sa... SARAH BLAKLEY-CARTWRIGHT She smiled at him. “How did you know just what I’d want to see?” “How could I not?” h... CASSANDRA CLARE While this is all very amusing, the kiss that will free the girl is the kiss that she most desires,�... CASSANDRA CLARE For Lucie," Peter said quietly, the flame of a gilded saint's candle fluttering in his hand." "... SARAH BLAKLEY-CARTWRIGHT I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me. If I had had wo... MADELINE MILLER Take it easy, friend," siad Peter, regaining his balance, quickly understanding the condition Henry ... SARAH BLAKLEY-CARTWRIGHT His breath caught, harsh enough that she looked over her shoulder. But his eyes weren't o... SARAH J. MAAS You are real," she said to herself. "Aye." His voice was deep and resonant, a caress in h... J.R. WARD Damn, you're good,' he said and rolled onto his back. The man wasn't much for flowery speech, Alesan... JULIE GARWOOD Do you want to marry him?" Peter stopped in front of her, pressing close. "You know I don't." SARAH BLAKLEY-CARTWRIGHT Eccolo!” he exclaimed. At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell ... E.M. FORSTER I know what it felt . . . like when I . . . thought you were dead, and-" A small gasp for breath, an... DIANA GABALDON They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been ... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Now very much against her will, she thought of the way Jace had looked at her then, the blaze of fai... CASSANDRA CLARE His face was glistening with cold. He was beautiful, the snow in his eyelashes like diamonds, the co... SARAH BLAKLEY-CARTWRIGHT He tried to remember Moon Child's eyes, but was no longer able to. He was sure of only one thing: th... MICHAEL ENDE He then kissed her. It was a very long time before he let her go. When he did, she looked... EVA IBBOTSON In that case" Tessa said, feeling hot blood rise to her face,"I think I would prefer it if you calle... CASSANDRA CLARE I love you," he said. She looked up at him, her eyes shiny and black, then looked away. "... RAINBOW ROWELL What was on the other side?" Donna said, "He said there was another world on the other side. He... PHILIP K. DICK He almost said to himself that he did not like her, before their conversation ended; he tried so har... ELIZABETH GASKELL Whatever it was her father wanted, Emma did not know how to provide it. She felt confused by what he... CAROL LEE I believe in you, my darling. I believe in you." He closed his eyes. And when he opened th... ELIZABETH HOYT Valentine whirled. Clary, lying half-conscious in the sand, her wrists and arms a screaming agony, s... CASSANDRA CLARE Tell me something good about your life," I whispered, needing to hear that he wasn't as broken as I ... DANI ALEXANDER Percy, let me go" she croaked. "You can't pull me up." His face was white with effort. She coul... RICK RIORDAN His heart stilled at the mere thought of her hurting herself. 'He was a fool.' Of course this d... ELIZABETH HOYT No, it had never been like this for him before, with anyone. Of all the women he’d known, she was ... J.D. ROBB He brought his other foot to the ground and gingerly tested his ankle. It would be a little sore, bu... ANNE BISHOP Inej turned to go. Kaz seized her hand, keeping it on the railing. He didn't look at her. "Stay", he... LEIGH BARDUGO He had just brought back a Central Asian Shepherd dog for my parents and a ring that was a gift from... JENNIFER WESTER And as she looked at the pool she saw the waters gather up into a column, rushing up foaming and sta... ELLIOT MABEUSE He never should have left the island. He’d been there with Diana and Penny. He could have tossed P... MICHAEL GRANT What do you want to show me?" "Nothing, really. I just want to be alone with you for a mi... RAINBOW ROWELL I know I want you," he heard himself say, all his vows and his honor all forgotten. She stood before... GEORGE R.R. MARTIN THERE was a man in our town, and he was wondrous rich; He gave away his millions to the colleges... FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS I thought told you to watch where you put your feet," he said accusingly. Erak shrugged. I did,... JOHN FLANAGAN What is wrong with the [tale of] Two Swords?" he asked, even more surprised. "Don't you care for it?... LYNN KURLAND Did you do this?” “There are other ways to beat someone than with fists.” Radu poked her ... KIERSTEN WHITE Once upon a time, there was a girl who talked to the moon. And she was mysterious and she was perfec... STEPHANIE PERKINS Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw Jace shoot her a look of white rage - but when she ... CASSANDRA CLARE It was about 1951. She had written me and said he was very special and he thought she was very speci... EDYTHE SCOTT BAGLEY But now she could not bear the way she sounded. She was not a person anyone could love. .... PETER CAREY That last night,” she said quietly. “Why did you say you hoped you'd never see me again?” ANGELA B. WADE Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem And he called it "Chops"... STEPHEN CHBOSKY He slowed to a walk. As he approached her he was surprised at just how pretty she was. She looked a ... CHRISTOPHER MOORE He looked down at himself and laughed softly. ‘‘My dark side dresses better than I do.’’ He ... RACHEL CAINE He was ruining it. Five minutes before, he’d looked at her with desire and she’d thought finally... ARIELLE HUDSON Why could he not have chosen some other woman? Why Avelina? But he knew why. It was because she had ... MELANIE DICKERSON His hands tightened on her shoulders as the truth washed over him. My God, she really had told him y... CAROLYN JEWEL If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay," said Gatsby. "You always have a ... F. SCOTT FITZGERALD She narrowed her eyes at him. She wanted to tell him that it was his fault, that she would ne... KIMBERLY DERTING The silky swirl of his tongue in the hollow of her navel sent fire licking through her veins. Hazily... LISA KLEYPAS My grandfather would have loved to have met you," he told her huskily. "He would have called you 'Sh... PATRICIA BRIGGS Percy pushed on his side furiously and the crack closed. His eyes blazed with anger. She hoped he wa... RICK RIORDAN I don't know who Azazel is," he said. "Isn't he the cat from The Smurfs?" He cast about , but Isabel... CASSANDRA CLARE One day, my father said there was nothing outside infinity. He said the universe was like a cardboar... HUGO HAMILTON So look," he began, leaning over the desk, "I was—" "Excuse me?" Bethany said. Her voice was ... SARAH DESSEN Had he but turned back then, and looked out once more on to the rose-lit garden, she would have seen... EMMUSKA ORCZY He said he had a show he wanted to put on the air about the survivors of a plane crash and would I p... JJ ABRAMS Yes. Kissing. Overrated." "I could change your mind," Zach said, surprising the hell out ... TRACY SUMNER How did you meet him?" I asked her. She smiled. "Here, actually. During a dinner rush. He was s... SARAH DESSEN The death of her father and mother and the rich acres of and that had come down to her had set a tra... SHERWOOD ANDERSON See,” he said playfully, and arched his eyebrows. “Admit it.” He moved in. His mouth ame so cl... C.C. HUNTER His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with h... RICK RIORDAN Daisy pulled away from Swift’s grasp. “You’ve changed,” she said, trying to collect herself.... LISA KLEYPAS Mendanbar took a deep breath. “You could stay here. At the castle, I mean. With me.” This wasn�... PATRICIA C. WREDE Only now it had become indispensable to him to have her face pressed close to him; he could never le... D.H. LAWRENCE I love you, he thought, looking at Win. I love every part of you, every thought and word... the enti... LISA KLEYPAS Was it ever . . .” She winced, wished she could muffle the need to ask. “Before, with anyone els... J.D. ROBB Wes sat in a cracked vinyl booth picking at his fries and listening to Amanda go on and on about the... BRANDI SALAZAR Before she realized he was next to her, he had placed his hands over hers on the countertop, then ho... ALICE HOFFMAN We should go back inside," she said, in a half whisper. She did not want to go back inside. She want... CASSANDRA CLARE With his supernatural vision he immediately spotted Rhea sitting near the shoreline, her legs stretc... KATIE REUS I walked with my eyes on the path, but out of the corners of them I saw a man hiding behind an olive... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Will rose slowly to his feet. He could not believe he was doing what he was doing, but it was clear ... CASSANDRA CLARE Stop! Stop!” Sophie shrieked with laughter as she ran down the stone steps that led to the g... JULIA QUINN My own participation in the campaign was delayed by the death of my son Calvin, which occurred on th... CALVIN COOLIDGE The little group before her finally moved on and Sarah took its place, standing before Tom like he w... BONNIE DEE Intrusive, thoughtless people!" said K. as he turned back into the room. The supervisor may have agr... FRANZ KAFKA And yet here he was, looking at Jem Carstairs, a boy so fragile-looking that he appeared to be made ... CASSANDRA CLARE Pain lanced through his neck. He gasped and his eyes flew open; Simon was sitting up on him, staring... CASSANDRA CLARE And I'm not sensitive at all, Philip. Just mean." He smiled down at her. "Have you ever co... NORA ROBERTS Mother,” Alec’s voice as he interrupted his mother was firm, implacable, and not unkind. “Fath... CASSANDRA CLARE Despereaux looked at his father, at his grey-streaked fur and trembling whiskers and his front paws ... KATE DICAMILLO For all his determination to keep her at arm's length, they had literally leaned on each other. He c... ROBERT GALBRAITH Seven hundred years ago, Tersa had told [Daemon] the living myth was coming. Seven hundred years of ... ANNE BISHOP A nod at Beatrice who held absolutely still. "She said she would come with me. She insisted on it. S... METTE IVIE HARRISON He tore off her pajamas. She wasn't out with a fresh face of makeup with her hair done or a short dr... ANONYMOUS1234 Hey, did you hear about Brad Miller?” he asked, already forgetting about the Lissie conversation. ... KIMBERLY DERTING What’s it like to live forever? Nicholas almost dropped the glass he had been holding. “Wha... GRACE WILLOWS I swear, I almost died back there on that ship, you know." He let her hand go, but he was stari... CASSANDRA CLARE You all right?" he said again. I didn't love him, I was far away from him, it was as though I w... MARGARET ATWOOD There was another problem with Emma's father, difficult for a small child who already thought of her... CAROL LEE You were dancing with Yuki and I looked at you. And you turned away and held her closer. Why did you... APRILYNNE PIKE The reason that he got a sitting with Washington was that his father was Charles Wilson Peale, a ver... FRED VOSS Kiss me again,” he challenged, only half joking. It was so weird to hear him say that, to hea... KIMBERLY DERTING So,” he said, flicking her nose, “how long have you wanted—” “I don’t see how... SARAH J. MAAS The Janus Guard will also be out that night,” he said, one hand reaching out to squeeze her should... LESLEY LIVINGSTON Peeta, you said at the interview you’d had a crush on me forever. When did forever start? SUZANNE COLLINS
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