Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Quotes

• If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

• It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

• I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual.

• Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul.

• You can not gain peace by avoiding life.

• Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

• The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.

• Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.

• I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

• Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.

• I read the book of Job last night - I don't think God comes out well in it.

• For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.

• I have lost friends, some by death... others through sheer inability to cross the street.

• Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size.

• Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.

• Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.