FastSaying

In the fall of 1978, I left the religious, conservative, biracial, slow-paced culture of South Carolina for the secular, liberal, multi-ethnic, intense culture of Princeton University. Like most immigrants, I was looking for a better life in a place I only half understood.


Virginia Postrel

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I don't know if I have a favorite color.
KATE MIDDLETON It's very special having a new little girl.
KATE MIDDLETON (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes...
JEAN SASSON It's all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you're properly trained.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Like all best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have to be seen to be believed.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have in sincerity pledged myself to your service, as so many of you are pledged to mine. Throughou...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I hope that tomorrow we can all, wherever we are, join in expressing our grief at Diana's loss, ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but t...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in th...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II What were once only hopes for the future have now come to pass; it is almost exactly 13 years since ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II First, I want to pay tribute to Diana myself. She was an exceptional and gifted human being. In good...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something e...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts an...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Grief is the price we pay for love.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The upward course of a nation's history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II At its heart, engineering is about using science to find creative, practical solutions. It is a nobl...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II At Christmas, I am always struck by how the spirit of togetherness lies also at the heart of the Chr...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II For many, Christmas is also a time for coming together. But for others, service will come first.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The lessons from the peace process are clear; whatever life throws at us, our individual responses w...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your s...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendor that are g...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the man...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Madam President, speaking here in Dublin Castle it is impossible to ignore the weight of history, as...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II These wretched babies don't come until they are ready.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II The events that I have attended to mark my Diamond Jubilee have been a humbling experience. It has t...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace ...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II No one who knew Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her, but felt they knew...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and o...
QUEEN ELIZABETH II We'll sort of get over the marriage first and then maybe look at the kids. But obviously we want...
PRINCE WILLIAM Family is the most important thing in the world.
PRINCESS DIANA You philosophers are lucky men. You write on paper and paper is patient. Unfortunate Empress that I ...
CATHERINE THE GREAT With the right help, children have a good chance of overcoming their issues while they are still you...
KATE MIDDLETON As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.
KING SOLOMON I don't mind a big fascinator. I think there is more scope for artwork in a fascinator rather th...
ZARA PHILLIPS I was always told from the hat-makers that you should have your hair up because it shows the hat mor...
ZARA PHILLIPS I don't think I'll still be riding at 40. There are a couple of people who are still riding ...
ZARA PHILLIPS My dad's not a big talker.
ZARA PHILLIPS My dad can be pretty critical sometimes.
ZARA PHILLIPS I'd love to have kids, but not at the moment.
ZARA PHILLIPS You cannot make horses 'safe.'
ZARA PHILLIPS Virtually everything that gets printed about me is wrong anyway, so it doesn't really matter wha...
ZARA PHILLIPS It's stupid to say that I don't like being in the public eye, but I don't like doing stu...
ZARA PHILLIPS I'm an affectionate person.
ZARA PHILLIPS People still text me to say that there is something about me in the paper, and what really annoys me...
ZARA PHILLIPS Sometimes people will come up in the street and say: 'My daughter loves you, will you sign an au...
ZARA PHILLIPS Taking part in an Olympics on home ground is something you dream about.
ZARA PHILLIPS My brother and I have been able to get on and have been very lucky to do things with our family that...
ZARA PHILLIPS I don't think about the media.
ZARA PHILLIPS I love the sport and being competitive.
ZARA PHILLIPS The horses are all characters, all personalities. Some you get along with, some you don't, some ...
ZARA PHILLIPS I hate having my picture taken.
ZARA PHILLIPS Unfortunately in sport it's either good or bad. You've got to take the highs and the lows.
ZARA PHILLIPS My mother is massively into sailing, so we always had Musto clothes, and it went on from there, real...
ZARA PHILLIPS The senior members of the royal family work very hard and I don't think people quite realise tha...
ZARA PHILLIPS In our sport you're very lucky to find a horse of a lifetime and I found mine relatively early. ...
ZARA PHILLIPS I don't have a stylist, and I do most of my shopping online, just because it's easier. I don...
ZARA PHILLIPS I think Facebook's dangerous. So many people I know get into trouble with Facebook... I'd ra...
ZARA PHILLIPS I'm not a princess anyway so I find that quite weird to be labelled as one.
ZARA PHILLIPS Smoking is hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, and dangerous to the lungs.
KING JAMES I My dear mamma is quite right when she says that we must lay down principles and not depart from them...
MARIE ANTOINETTE I never make a trip to the United States without visiting a supermarket. To me they are more fascina...
WALLIS SIMPSON PS: It's all gossip about the prince. I'm not in the habit of taking my girlfriends' bea...
WALLIS SIMPSON I am so anxious for you not to abdicate and I think the fact that you do is going to put me in the w...
WALLIS SIMPSON I hate this place. I shall hate it to my grave.
WALLIS SIMPSON I look a hundred and weigh 110 - you won't love me when you see the wreck England has made me.
WALLIS SIMPSON A woman's life can really be a succession of lives, each revolving around some emotionally compe...
WALLIS SIMPSON Never explain, never complain.
WALLIS SIMPSON You have no idea how hard it is to live out a great romance.
WALLIS SIMPSON I have always had the courage for the new things that life sometimes offers.
WALLIS SIMPSON For a gallant spirit there can never be defeat.
WALLIS SIMPSON Forgive me for not writing but this man is exhausting.
WALLIS SIMPSON You can never be too rich or too thin.
WALLIS SIMPSON A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
KING SOLOMON It seems to me that man is made to act rather than to know: the principles of things escape our most...
FREDERICK THE GREAT Addiction is a hugely complex and destructive disease, and its impact can be simply devastating. All...
KATE MIDDLETON There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.
MARIE ANTOINETTE I have seen all, I have heard all, I have forgotten all.
MARIE ANTOINETTE I think change needs to be egoless. It's not about my leaving my fingerprints or a legacy. It...
QUEEN RANIA OF JORDAN We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.
QUEEN VICTORIA I can make a lord, but only God can make a gentleman.
KING JAMES I I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.
CHARLES V I feel very, very lucky that George has got a little sister.
KATE MIDDLETON It would be doing me great injustice to think that I have any feeling of indifference to my country;...
MARIE ANTOINETTE I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.
AUGUSTUS A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in.
FREDERICK THE GREAT Nothing is more useless in developing a nation's economy than a gun, and nothing blocks the road...
HUSSEIN OF JORDAN It is necessary to try to pass one's self always; this occupation ought to last as long as life.
QUEEN CHRISTINA There's nothing like a jolly good disaster to get people to start doing something.
PRINCE CHARLES We shouldn't judge people through the prism of our own stereotypes.
QUEEN RANIA OF JORDAN I don't even know how to use a parking meter, let alone a phone box.
PRINCESS DIANA What must it be like for a little boy to read that daddy never loved mummy?
PRINCESS DIANA The kindness and affection from the public have carried me through some of the most difficult period...
PRINCESS DIANA People think that at the end of the day a man is the only answer. Actually, a fulfilling job is bett...
PRINCESS DIANA

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VIRGINIA POSTREL The biggest threat to a better life is the desire to keep the future under control - to make the wor...
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VIRGINIA POSTREL Americans born since World War II have grown up in a media-saturated environment. From childhood, we...
VIRGINIA POSTREL The impulse for personal adornment is hard to stamp out.
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VIRGINIA POSTREL Socialism is about claims of justice, and it is also about money: about wealth, income, physical and...
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VIRGINIA POSTREL When 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' premiered on the WB Network in 1996, American culture was in...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Before it became a ubiquitous part of urban life, Starbucks was, in most American cities, a radicall...
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VIRGINIA POSTREL Persuasion has become a kind of force. The more the advertiser knows about what consumers want, and ...
VIRGINIA POSTREL In Shakespeare's world, characters cannot trust their senses. Is the ghost in Hamlet true and tr...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Most of us cluster somewhere in the middle of most statistical distributions. But there are lots of ...
VIRGINIA POSTREL We are material creatures who spend much of our lives on material pursuits (even building a cathedra...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Society needs both parents and nonparents, both the work party and the home party. While raising chi...
VIRGINIA POSTREL European nations began World War I with a glamorous vision of war, only to be psychologically shatte...
VIRGINIA POSTREL If you default on your Visa bill, nobody comes to repossess your refrigerator or auction off your sh...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Glamour is an imaginative process that creates a specific emotional response: a sharp mixture of pro...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Like the skyscraper, the automobile, and the motion-picture palace, neon signs once symbolized popul...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Cosmetics makers have always sold 'hope in a jar' - creams and potions that promise youth, b...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Chains do more than bargain down prices from suppliers or divide fixed costs across a lot of units. ...
VIRGINIA POSTREL The SAT is not perfect. We all know smart, knowledgeable people who do badly on standardized tests. ...
VIRGINIA POSTREL The elements that create glamour are not specific styles - bias-cut gowns or lacquered furniture - b...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Airline glamour never promised anything as mundane as elbow room, much less a flat bed, a massage, o...
VIRGINIA POSTREL 'Frankenstein' did not invent the fear of science; the novel found its audience because it d...
VIRGINIA POSTREL The Internet exposes a diversity of opinion, experience, and taste we'd been led to believe didn...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Barack Obama has brought glamour back to American politics - not the faux glamour-by-association of ...
VIRGINIA POSTREL We've gone from a world in which Starbucks set a cutting-edge standard for mass-market design to...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Viewers don't care how big media companies are. They care whether they can dump those they don&#...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Kidney donors don't have to be close relatives of recipients, but they do need to have the right...
VIRGINIA POSTREL 'The Matrix' is a movie that is all about glamour. I could do a whole talk on 'The Matri...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Living with a single kidney is almost exactly like living with two; the remaining kidney expands to ...
VIRGINIA POSTREL The evergreen story of people in debt becomes even sexier in an economic downturn, when debts inevit...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Though designed as a mere convenience, clothing sizes establish an unintended norm, an ideal from wh...
VIRGINIA POSTREL In post-Vietnam, post-Watergate America, skeptical voters demand full disclosure of everything from ...
VIRGINIA POSTREL With its fluctuating forms and needless decoration, fashion epitomizes the supposedly unproductive w...
VIRGINIA POSTREL By reshaping or decorating our outer selves, we express our inner sense of self: 'I like that...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Behind the criticism of fashion as an artistic medium is a highly ideological prejudice: against mar...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Abundant choice doesn't force us to look for the absolute best of everything. It allows us to fi...
VIRGINIA POSTREL 'CSI' has not only remained a top-rated show through seven seasons; it has had real-world co...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Standardized sizes made inexpensive, off-the-rack garments economically feasible. They gave shoppers...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Although people often equate them, glamour is not the same as beauty, stylishness, luxury, celebrity...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Grassroots techies - the mostly unknown people who write code and start companies that don't mak...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Like the 'test tube babies' born of in vitro fertilization, cloned children need not be iden...
VIRGINIA POSTREL On the Net, the bell curve reclaims its tails. The uncommon is as accessible as the common. The very...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Like John Kennedy in 1960, Obama combines youth, vigor, and good looks with the promise of political...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Glamour is a beautiful illusion - the word 'glamour' originally meant a literal magic spell ...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Religion, art, and science flourish best in a free society. True, freedom does not afford much oppor...
VIRGINIA POSTREL The Internet ethos of diversity and competition runs exactly counter to uniform, gatekeeper-oriented...
VIRGINIA POSTREL The children who are 'our future' will inherit a world created not just by parental devotion...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Neon signs don't consume much power, but they look like they do. A cousin of fluorescent lightin...
VIRGINIA POSTREL The growth of medical expenditures in the U.S. is not caused by administrative costs but by increase...
VIRGINIA POSTREL When I was in college, I wanted to be editor of 'Reason' when I grew up. It was an impractic...
VIRGINIA POSTREL A standard 'well woman' checkup can last as little as 10 minutes, hardly time for any in-dep...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Apple doesn't need to maximize book sales. It simply needs to keep publishers happy enough to ma...
VIRGINIA POSTREL The low point for neon came in 1982, when Holiday Inn did away with its signature 'Great Sign,&#...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Internet pharmacies return to consumers the choice promised by supporters of the 1938 Food, Drug and...
VIRGINIA POSTREL What makes a loft authentic isn't its layout or its history but its ability to give people a tru...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Clothes are unique sculptures, dependent on a supporting human form and created to move.
VIRGINIA POSTREL Loft living is the antithesis of suburban domesticity, if only because the open spaces don't eas...
VIRGINIA POSTREL More than two decades after the birth of Louise Brown, and all the hysteria that surrounded her '...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Like the rest of the genetic lottery, beauty is unfair. Everyone falls short of perfection, but some...
VIRGINIA POSTREL The Elgin Marbles were supposed to be on the Parthenon. For many works of art, a museum is an artifi...
VIRGINIA POSTREL By binding image and desire, glamour gives us pleasure, even as it heightens our yearning. It leads ...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Through the 1990s, 'Reason' was a voice of 'dissident feminism,' upholding the equal...
VIRGINIA POSTREL America is a mosaic not of groups but of individuals, each of whom carries a host of cultural influe...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Cinema isn't just a good medium for translating graphic novels. It's specifically a good med...
VIRGINIA POSTREL The Taliban outlawed wearing polish in the late 1990s, punishing some offenders by amputating a fing...
VIRGINIA POSTREL The definition of an 'operating system' is bound to evolve with customer demands and technol...
VIRGINIA POSTREL As discomfiting as it is to both market optimists and policy activists, a certain amount of instabil...
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VIRGINIA POSTREL The intimate contest for self-command never ends, and lifetime happiness requires finding the right ...
VIRGINIA POSTREL For designers, the rigidity of an alphabet presents a never-ending artistic challenge: How do you do...
VIRGINIA POSTREL We know beauty when we see it, and our reactions are remarkably consistent. Beauty is not just a soc...
VIRGINIA POSTREL The profusion of fonts is one more product of the digital revolution. Beginning in the mid-'80s ...
VIRGINIA POSTREL In a media culture, we not only judge strangers by how they look but by the images of how they look....
VIRGINIA POSTREL Traditional PCs face competition from specialty products like Palm Pilots and from the servers that ...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Rising living standards - whether in a village, a region, a nation, or the world - depend first on s...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Fit experts envision a future in which you'd carry your body scan in your cell phone or on a thu...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Y2K hype taps our native discomfort with the realities of a dynamic, evolving social order. It eleva...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Glamour is all about transcending this world and getting to an idealized, perfect place. And this is...
VIRGINIA POSTREL A lot of consumers actively enjoy advertising, especially fashion print ads and clever TV commercial...
VIRGINIA POSTREL 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 To have a successful writing career, you must be willing to sacrifice a great deal. The book, the de...
VIRGINIA HENLEY We have a responsibility to help those around us and help others in need.
VIRGINIA WILLIAMS 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 So much is asked of parents, and so little is given.
VIRGINIA SATIR We must not allow other people's limited perceptions to define us.
VIRGINIA SATIR Life is not what it's supposed to be. It's what it is. The way you cope with it is what make...
VIRGINIA SATIR Problems are not the problem; coping is the problem.
VIRGINIA SATIR There is an abundance of misinformation, exaggeration, and blatant lies being spread by interest gro...
VIRGINIA FOXX 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 I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen by them, heard by the...
VIRGINIA SATIR 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 I hope Britney doesn't get bummed out that Lindsey is a better singer. It is not Lindsey saying ...
VIRGINIA MADSEN 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 I always felt that I hadn't achieved what I wanted to achieve. I always felt I could get better. Tha...
VIRGINIA WADE 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 Our brave soldiers and support personnel are engaged in a battle as important as any the United Stat...
VIRGINIA FOXX Fly high... Where the only chill that cuts through you is the wind. Where your heart pounds from exh...
VIRGINIA ALISON 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