Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf, known professionally as Virginia Woolf, was an English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 January 1882
CityLondon, England
audience came cannot chance drawing highly hold hope observe opinion subject whatever
When a subject is highly controversial... one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.
brain brains buried machinery passion roaring soaring
My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery -always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?
beyond literature minded opinion others reason strewn
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others
confidence generate inferior invaluable people thinking
Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradles. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself.
centuries delicious figure glasses looking magic natural power reflecting served size twice women
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
british-author caught heart heat measure shall tangled violence
Who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body?
effort mind
They went in and out of each other's minds without any effort.
adventure thinking attachment
For now she need not think of anybody. She coud be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others... and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.
artist beyond british-author men mind minded nature opinions reason strewn
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.
british-author submerged truth
Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.
british-author poems signing wrote
Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
bronze dropped face great heavy hung iron mask private scaffold yellow
Tom's great yellow bronze mask all draped upon an iron framework. An inhibited, nerve-drawn; dropped face -- as if hung on a scaffold of heavy private brooding; and thought.
british-author foreign gifts humour perish
Humour is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.
foreign gift humor perish
Humor is the first gift to perish in a foreign language.