Virginia Woolf Quotes

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

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

I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in. – Virginia Woolf

For most of history, anonymous was a woman. – Virginia Woolf

A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out. – Virginia Woolf

Arrange whatever pieces come your way. – Virginia Woolf

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded. – Virginia Woolf

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages. – Virginia Woolf

The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. – Virginia Woolf

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

Books are the mirrors of the soul. – Virginia Woolf

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works. – Virginia Woolf

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

Language is wine upon the lips. – Virginia Woolf

One cannot grow without first questioning what one knows. – Virginia Woolf

It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape, keep one at it more than anything. – Virginia Woolf

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

I have lost friends, some by death… others by sheer inability to cross the street. – Virginia Woolf

The beauty of the world… has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. – Virginia Woolf

I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life. – Virginia Woolf

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame. – Virginia Woolf

A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it’s there complete in the mind forever. – Virginia Woolf

To enjoy freedom, if the platitude is pardonable, we have of course to control ourselves. – Virginia Woolf

The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers. – Virginia Woolf

Reality means you live until you die. The real truth is nobody wants reality. – Virginia Woolf

Novels can’t possibly compete with life. – Virginia Woolf

A masterpiece . . . may be unwelcome but is unforgettable. – Virginia Woolf

Rock bottom is the foundation on which I built my life. – Virginia Woolf

A woman’s friendship with another woman is always strained. – Virginia Woolf

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages. – Virginia Woolf

You cannot find peace by avoiding life. – Virginia Woolf

I will not be famous, great. I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free ones self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded. – Virginia Woolf

Give her a room of her own and five hundred a year, let her speak her mind and leave out half that she now puts in, and she will write a better book one of these days. – Virginia Woolf

There is not a woman in the three kingdoms that can do what I have done. – Virginia Woolf

It is only by putting [a language] on and taking it off that I can see these [gendered] differences in myself. – Virginia Woolf

Science’s major achievements are supposed to be fact, which happens to be the philosophy of today, facts, not future. – Virginia Woolf

She sliced like a knife through everything. – Virginia Woolf

What one means by integrity as applied to style is that the writing should be honest. – Virginia Woolf

And the triumph of such new sensations, theories, convictions as were gained during the day have not lost their power, – Virginia Woolf

To obey someone else is the only pleasure in life that isn’t ultimately cumbersome. – Virginia Woolf

All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. – Virginia Woolf

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

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory. – Virginia Woolf

It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw. – Virginia Woolf

Let us never cease from thinking—what is this “civilisation” in which we find ourselves? What are these ceremonies and why should we take part in them? What are these professions and why should we make money out of them? – Virginia Woolf

Fiction must stick to facts, and the truer the facts the better the fiction. – Virginia Woolf

I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me. – Virginia Woolf

The theme of the necessity of a room of one’s own for the woman writer is central to each of Woolf’s essays. – Virginia Woolf

While we have shapely sentences let us have shapely ceremonies. – Virginia Woolf

I want to live and feel all the shades, tones, and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. – Virginia Woolf