57 Quotes By Virginia Woolf


The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.
Virginia Woolf on happiness

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.
Virginia Woolf on history

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.
Virginia Woolf on history

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.
Virginia Woolf on humor

There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea.
Virginia Woolf on intelligence

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
Virginia Woolf on love

Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?
Virginia Woolf on men

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
Virginia Woolf on money

Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.
Virginia Woolf on money

Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art.
Virginia Woolf on nature

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.
Virginia Woolf on nature

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.
Virginia Woolf on peace

Some people go to priests others to poetry I to my friends.
Virginia Woolf on poetry

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.
Virginia Woolf on poetry

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
Virginia Woolf on power

Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.
Virginia Woolf on power

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure - the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?
Virginia Woolf on relationship

The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has a romance of its own.
Virginia Woolf on romantic

I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.
Virginia Woolf on time

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
Virginia Woolf on truth