Una mujer debe tener dinero y una habitación propia para poder escribir novelas; y esto, como veis, deja sin resolver el gran problema de la verdadera naturaleza de la mujer y la verdadera naturaleza de la novela.
Virginia Woolf
Related …ser una mujer es tener piel de mujer, dos cromosomas X y la capacidad de concebir y alimentar a l... ALMUDENA GRANDES Yo tenía la impresión de que mi hermano no sólo había enloquecido del todo, sino que se estaba v... ITALO CALVINO ¿Encontraré una mujer que, fiel y benévola, comparta mi suerte brillante y generosa, cuando ahora... LEOPOLD VON SACHER-MASOCH Las mujeres contribuyen más de la mitad de la nación y no es posible hacer labor legislativa seria... CLARA CAMPOAMOR Hay criminales que proclaman tan campantes ‘la maté porque era mía’, así no más, como si fue... EDUARDO GALEANO Mercy deambuló desconsolada por la casa. Era sólo una cuestión de tiempo, pero de una u otra mane... SARAH SINGLETON Así, la suerte de la mujer y la del socialismo están íntimamente ligadas, como se ve también SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR Hay un minuto en que se agota la siesta. Hasta la secreta, recóndita, minúscula actividad de los i... GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ La buena y verdadera amistad no puede ni debe ser sospechosa de nada. MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA La poesía aporta una gran belleza a la vida, pero también una gran tristeza, y no estoy seguro de ... NICHOLAS SPARKS Mary me dijo: ahora ya eres una mujer, y eso me hizo llorar. Entonces ella me abrazó y me consoló ... MARGARET ATWOOD Esa pareja equilibrada no es una utopía ; existen tales parejas, a veces incluso en el mismo marco ... SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR Cómo soportaba él los ojos de la muchacha y revolvía los suyos contra la cabeza juvenil, escapand... JUAN CARLOS ONETTI Doña Lorena, una bibliotecaria sabia que rondaba por allí por las tardes, siempre me preparaba una... CARLOS RUIZ ZAFóN Concibe el amor como una humillación, una debilidad, un despilfarro de los recursos emocionales y m... J.K. ROWLING En Harvard y otras universidades, estudiaron la importancia de la actitud en el éxito de las person... JOHN C. MAXWELL ¿Quieres entender que es un año de vida? Pregúntaselo a un estudiante que acaba de suspender el e... MARC LEVY Así pues, tanto las sociedades como los grupos humanos más pequeños pueden tomar decisiones catas... JARED DIAMOND Pero la guerra… Son los lápices rojos, las reglas y los compases, los mapas…. Motoristas, órde... ANGEL MARIA DE LERA Las mujeres que se fanatizaron con la liberación femenina fueron las que encontraron una manera mar... RICARDO ARJONA Lo que quiero conseguir del curso en la universidad es algún conocimiento sobre la mejor manera de ... L.M. MONTGOMERY Es una mera ficción eso de que no existe un puente de unión entre una y otra gente, y que todos vi... HERMANN HESSE Y entonces recibió a la Muerte como si fuera una vieja amiga, y se marchó con ella de buen grado. ... J.K. ROWLING A veces nos vamos para tratar de encontrarnos. Al hacernos mayores nos perdemos. No sabemos qué hac... ÁNGELA BECERRA Una mujer es como la buena literatura: al alcance de todos, pero incomprensible para los estúpidos. GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ Para mí, el azul mediterráneo ya no es bonito. La transparencia de sus aguas, tan valorada por los... JONATHAN FRANZEN En cuanto al poder, se aleja a toda vela de la calle y del mercado, de las asambleas y de los parlam... ZYGMUNT BAUMAN Los amantes y los locos tienen desbocado el seso, y son dados a forjar fantasías que abarcan más d... WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Sí, estaba cansado de que se enfadara sin razón aparente, de cómo se enfurruñaba y hacía refere... JOHN GREEN (...) Y la alegría lo llenó de la cabeza a los pies, alegría de vivir y alegría de ser él mismo... MICHAEL ENDE [...]sabía que el organismo producía tres tipos de lágrimas, cada una con su propia composición ... MAGGIE STIEFVATER Ella me sonrió y yo le devolví la sonrisa, sin poder dejar de pensar cómo era posible que me hubi... NICHOLAS SPARKS La voluntad, el deseo de vivir, es tan fuerte en el animal como en el hombre. En el hombre es mayor ... PíO BAROJA Durante toda mi vida he entendido el amor como una especie de esclavitud consentida. Pero esto no es... PAULO COELHO La alternabilidad entre derecha e izquierda es un principio subversivo. Este principio en lo políti... FRANCISCO NúñEZ DEL ARCO En otras palabras, la individualización consiste en transformar la identidad humana de algo 'dado' ... ZYGMUNT BAUMAN Se puede vivir sin leer, es cierto: pero también se puede vivir sin amar: el argumento hace aguas c... RICARDO MENéNDEZ SALMóN A veces oigo una música... O una canción... Una voz de mujer... Y allí encuentro lo que he sentid... SVETLANA ALEXIEVICH La verdadera amistad resiste el tiempo, la distancia y el silencio. ISABEL ALLENDE Es más difícil sondear la mente de una mujer que los fundamentos de la mecánica cuántica. SHAHEN HACYAN Todos eran efímeros y transitorios, y a la vuelta de cien años no quedaría rastro de ellos sobre ... MIGUEL DELIBES El peor tipo de llanto no era el tipo que todos podían ver, los lamentos en las esquinas, el desgar... KATIE MCGARRY Confía en ella. Tu hija es una mujer. Quizá la Iglesia diga que representamos el pecado, que debem... ILDEFONSO FALCONES Hoy ya sé que todo nos espía, que nada pasa inadvertido y que aun el papal pintado de las paredes ... GüNTER GRASS El hombre no domina la naturaleza, sino que, fundándose sobre el conocimiento de unas cuantas leyes... ERICH FROMM Nadie sabe lo que sucede en la vida de nadie, salvo en la propia. Y cuando le arruinas una parte de ... JAY ASHER Entro Kriztina y aquel salon oscuro se inundo de luz. No solamente irradiaba juventud, no. Irradiaba... SáNDOR MáRAI Pongámonos de acuerdo en qué es la igualdad, pues si la libertad es la cima, la igualdad es la bas... VICTOR HUGO Para bailar, hay que merecerlo. Bailar sobre un escenario y delante de público constituye la mayor ... AMéLIE NOTHOMB Siempre he pensado, de hecho, que los seres humanos son 'frágiles' al amor. Sufren antes incluso de... ELISABETTA GNONE Porque el tiempo es vida, y la vida reside en el corazón. Y cuanto más ahorraba de esto la gente, ... MICHAEL ENDE El paraguas individual es la imágen favorita de mi padre cuando quiere caracterizar el tiempo en qu... EDWARD BELLAMY (...) y todo aquello unido era el río, todas las voces, los fines, los anhelos, los sufrimientos, l... HERMANN HESSE Una mujer merece más que un príncipe azul, más que un rey colmado de oro, más que un poderoso em... MARTíN BALAREZO GARCíA La primera regla del Club de la lucha es: nadie habla sobre el Club de la lucha. La segunda regla de... CHUCK PALAHNIUK Sus Últimos Días ¿Va a vivir su último día, De la misma manera como usted... SUZY KASSEM Una dictadura perfecta tendría la apariencia de una democracia,pero sería básicamente una prisió... ALDOUS HUXLEY A veces, lees un libro y te llena con este fervor evangélico raro, y te convences de que el mundo d... JOHN GREEN Todo en ella es cautivante, como la consecuencia de una tormenta. No se supone que la gente obtenga ... COLLEEN HOOVER El niño que sobrevivió continúa siendo un símbolo de nuestra causa: el triunfo del bien, el pode... J.K. ROWLING La historia no ha cambiado. Hace mil anos ellos eran los duenos del mundo. Hoy en dia lo siguen sien... ANTONIO GUADARRAMA Ustedes piensan primero en obtener la producción más grande posible en el menor tiempo posible. No... ALDOUS HUXLEY Fue así que me enloquecí. Y en mi locura he hallado libertad y seguridad; la libertad d... KAHLIL GIBRAN Solo después de casarse descubrió Galip que en la vida de aquella persona anónima a la que las es... ORHAN PAMUK No hay razón para estar enfadado. La ira solo distrae la tristeza que lo abarca, el sincero conocim... JOHN GREEN De lo que hemos dicho se desprende que la tarea del poeta es describir no lo que ha acontecido,... ARISTOTLE Para la mayoría de nosotros la verdadera vida es la vida que no llevamos. OSCAR WILDE La Lotería, con su reparto semanal de enormes premios, era el único aconteci... GEORGE ORWELL Así se reanudó una amistad prohibida que por lo menos una vez se pareció al amor. Hablaban hasta ... GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ El apócrifo aviso de la columna de 'busco trabajo'-'tengo auto, puedo viajar'- puede servir como ep... ZYGMUNT BAUMAN Había un no sé qué de vertiginoso que Emma sentía llegar hasta sí, como una emanación de aquel... FLAUBERT GUSTAVE Pero los escritores mienten, aun los más sinceros. Los menos hábiles, carentes de palabras y frase... MARGUERITE YOURCENAR Tenemos una sociedad de subnormales, y por eso la gente actúa como lo hace, y se hace lo que se hac... CHARLES BUKOWSKI «Tomamos una aldea... Buscábamos agua. Entramos en un patio donde habíamos divisado un pozo con c... SVETLANA ALEXIEVICH Era peor la herida... eran peor muchas heridas... que saber la profundidad de lealtad y amor que yac... ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE Formar parte de la minoría, aunque fuese una minoría de uno solo, no te convertía en loco. Había... GEORGE ORWELL Hallando en cada enfermedad síntomas de la mía, creía tenerlas todas y contraje una más cruel de... JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU La labor más importante del ser humano es buscar la moralidad en sus actos. Es de lo que depende nu... ALBERT EINSTEIN Al salir del velorio había movido una taza vacía frente a mí. Había dicho: «He leído su suerte... GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ Cuando el jardín de la memoria comienza a secarse -le había dicho Celâl una de aquellas noches-, ... ORHAN PAMUK Las personas realmente inteligentes, son aquellas que pueden hablar de cualquier tema y, entre esos ... ED HERNANDEZ Escribir es una necesidad infantil de construirme un mundo. Es evadir con picardía la realidad y to... RICARDO ARJONA Si se lo permitimos, los niños pueden enseñarnos la salida. Hay una historia muy conocida de... BRIAN L. WEISS Dos amantes dichosos no tienen fin ni muerte, nacen y mueren muchas veces mientras viven, ... PABLO NERUDA Y la cuestión es ésta: la televisión invierte la evolución de lo sensible en inteligible y lo co... GIOVANNI SARTORI ¿Qué sucedería al crear una vida lo bastante expansiva como para poder sincronizar varios contrar... ELIZABETH GILBERT Y al final dejó el horror de esta vida para entrar en el horror de la muerte. FERNANDO VALLEJO Cuando tienes un gran amor, debes cuidarlo como si fuera una planta. Debes abonarlo y protegerlo de ... HIROMI KAWAKAMI Una "persona" hace lo que debe, cuando debe y donde debe. Una "bestia" hace lo que le da la gana, cu... HENRY A. ROJAS L. Una combinación de inversiones en sintonía con las necesidades y condiciones locales pueden permit... JEFFREY D. SACHS Lo que mucha gente llama amar consiste en elegir una mujer y casarse con ella. La eligen, te lo juro... JULIO CORTáZAR La vanidad es la necedad del egoísmo, y el orgullo, la insolencia de la vanidad. FERNáN CABALLERO Es fácil que te guste alguien desde la distancia. Pero cuando deja de ser algo increíble e inalcan... JOHN GREEN Los Padres son dueños de todo y la gente no posée nada; es la obra maestra de la razón y la justi... VOLTAIRE En ese momento me di cuenta de que el anochecer es solo una ilusión, porque el sol sigue estando pr... NICHOLAS SPARKS Vive tu vida desde adentro para fuera, no desde el centro de la cabeza, donde solo vive el miedo y l... PHILIP T. M. Con tal disposición y determinación, ¡qué país es éste para el viajero, donde la más mísera ... WASHINGTON IRVING ¿Que quiere una mujer? Ella quieres ser respetada, que la escuches la entiendas, quiere flores, qui... BARBARA HALL Tengo una memoria excepcional. Recuerdo muy bien quien me tomó de la mano para evitar que cayera y ... IGNACIO NOVO ...y que el sueño, cerrojo a veces para la pena de los ojos, me robe un tanto a mi propia compañí... WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
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