Virginia Wolfe Quotes

Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life. ~ Virginia Woolf

It is from the middle class that writers spring, because, it is in the middle class only that the practice of writing is as natural and habitual as hoeing a field or building a house. ~ Virginia Woolf

You take what you're given, whether it's the cornfields of the Midwest or the coal mines of West Virginia, and you make your fiction out of it. It's all you have. And somehow, wherever you are, it always seems to be enough. ~ Larry Brown

Probably every book I read influenced me in some small way. Authors like Jan Westcott, Kathleen Winsor, Catherine Cookson, Georgette Heyer, and even Barbara Cartland taught me to write character-driven stories. ~ Virginia Henley

A Virginia subdivision now has restricted deed covenants against 'farming and other nuisances'. Can you imagine? In our culture, we are actually labeling farming as a nuisance. What have we done to ourselves, that the oldest and noblest vocation on earth, the educated agrarian proletariat envisioned by Thomas Jefferson, has been reduced to nothing more than a nuisance? ~ Joel Salatin

Kind old ladies assure us that cats are often the best judges of character. A cat will always go to a good man, they say[.] ~ Virginia Woolf

But it would have been a surprise, not only to katherine herself, if some magic watch could have taken count of the moments spent in an entirely different occupation from her ostensible one.Sitting with faded papers before her, she took part in a series of scenes such as the taming of wild ponies upon the American prairies, or the conduct of a vast ship in a hurricane round a black promontory of rock, or in others more peaceful, but marked by her complete emancipation from her present surroundings and, needles to say, her surprising ability in her new vocation. ~ Virginia Woolf

Communication is truth; communication is happiness. To share is our duty; to go down boldly and bring to light those hidden thoughts which are the most diseased; to conceal nothing; to pretend nothing; if we are ignorant to say so; if we love our friends to let them know it. ~ Virginia Woolf

Make different teas with the superherbs or create new smoothies with the superfoods. Better yet, take your superherb tea and blend it with your superfoods to make the best elixirs ever. ~ David Wolfe

Her mind was like her room, in which lights advanced and retreated, came pirouetting and stepping delicately, spread their tails, pecked their way; and then her whole being was suffused, like the room again, with a cloud of some profound knowledge, some unspoken regret, and then she was full of locked drawers, stuffed with letters, like her cabinets. ~ Virginia Woolf

I was young, so that I desired high things only. ~ Gene Wolfe

The past moves me and with me, although I remove myself from it. Its light often shines on this night traveler: and when it does, I scribble it down. Whatever pleasure is in it I need pass on. That's happiness. That is who I am. ~ Virginia Hamilton

I love hanging out with people who make me forget to look at my phone. ~ David Wolfe

People actually have six senses, ~ Virginia Renaud

There was something unusual about him, or something behind him. It might be that he was bookish - never came to see you without taking up the book on the table (he was now reading, with his bootlaces trailing on the floor); or that he was a gentleman, which showed itself in the way he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and in his manners of course to women. ~ 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 over. There is a brown pool on the table
it is running among your books and papers. Now you mop it up, clumsily, with your pocket-hankerchief. You then stuff your hankerchief back into your pocket
that is not Byron; that is so essentially you that if I think of you in twenty years' time, when we are both famous, gouty and intolerable, it will be by that scene: and if you are dead, I shall weep. ~ Virginia Woolf

What went wrong? That is the question, and not "To be or not to be," for all of Shakespeare. ~ Gene Wolfe

ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER, 1884.

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest
scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara - nor you, ye limitless prairies - nor
your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite - nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-
loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones - nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes -
nor Mississippi's stream:
- This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name - the
still small voice vibrating - America's choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen - the act itself the main, the
quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous'd - sea-board and inland
- Texas to Maine - the Prairie States - Vermont, Virginia,
California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West - the paradox and con-
flict,
The countless snow-flakes falling - (a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:)
the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity - welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
- Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify - while the
heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails. ~ Walt Whitman

The most monstrous monster is the monster with noble feelings ~ Virginia Woolf

There's no doubt in my mind that I've found out how to begin at this age to say sth in my own voice
and that interests me so that I can go ahead without any : ) praise ~ Virginia Woolf

Knowing when you should weigh up your options, remain calm and not take everything at face value has certain benefits
Ending the day with with a peaceful soul is one... ~ Virginia Alison

[Virginia] has a very sizeable collection of democrats, liberals and moonbats. (Yes, they can be separated.) ~ John Ringo

For the whole world seemed to have dissolved in this early morning hour into a pool of thought, a deep basin of reality, and one could almost fancy that had Mr. Carmichael spoken, for instance, a little tear would have rent the surface pool. And then? Something would emerge. A hand would be shoved up, a blade would be flashed. It was nonsense of course. ~ Virginia Woolf

The simple truth is that the Web the Internet, does one thing. It speeds up the retrieval and dissemination of information, partially eliminating such chores as going outdoors to the mailbox or the adult bookstore, or having to pick up the phone to get hold of your stockbroker or some buddies to shoot the breeze with. That one thing the Internet does, and only that. All the rest is Digibabble. ~ Tom Wolfe

What are the purposes of examinations anyhow? Are they to increase our educational attainment? Or are they instruments used to bring suffering and humiliation and deep hurt to a person who is trying so hard to succeed? ~ Virginia Mae Axline

But with you I am deeply passionately, unrequitedly in love. ~ Virginia Woolf

I believe in plenty of optimism and white paint. ~ Elsie De Wolfe

Passion drove her deeper, into the abyss beneath his skin where she mapped his soul to the dance of his heartbeat... ~ Virginia Alison

Families and societies are small and large versions of one another. Both are made up of people who have to work together, whose destinies are tied up with one another. Each features the components of a relationship: leaders perform roles relative to the led, the young to the old, and male to female; and each is involved with the process of decision-making, use of authority, and the seeking of common goals. ~ Virginia Satir

The thing about Proust is his combination of the utmost sensibility with the utmost tenacity. He searches out these butterfly shades to the last grain. He is as tough as catgut and as evanescent as a butterfly's bloom. ~ Virginia Woolf

I belong to quick, futile moments of intense feeling. Yes, I belong to moments. Not to people. ~ Virginia Woolf

What was it then? What did it mean? Could things thrust their hands up and grip one; could the blade cut; the fist grasp? Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of the tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life? - startling, unexpected, unknown? For one moment she felt that if they both got up, here, now on the lawn, and demanded an explanation, why it was so short, why was it so inexplicable, said it with violence, as two fully equipped human beings from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beauty would roll itself up; the space would fill; those empty flourishes would form into shape; if they shouted loud enough Mrs. Ramsay would return. "Mrs. Ramsay!" she said aloud, "Mrs. Ramsay!" The tears ran down her face. ~ Virginia Woolf

We do not want to be told what we know. We do not want to call things by their names, although we're willing to call one another bad ones. We call meanness nobility and hatred honor. The way to make yourself a hero is to make me out a scoundrel. You won't admit that either, but it's true. ~ Thomas Wolfe

I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of 'You Can't Go Home Again' and 'Look Homeward, Angel.' ~ Maya Angelou

Just as a primitive sextant functions on the illusion that the sun and stars rotate around the planet we are standing on, our senses give us the illusion of stability in the universe, and we accept it, because without that acceptance, nothing can be done. Virginia ~ Richard K. Morgan

My travels took me as far north as Thorsminde, Denmark (in February no less); as far south as Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia; as far west as the Hoover Library at Stanford University; and to various points east, including the always amazing Library of Congress and the U.S. National Archives, and equally enticing archives in London, Liverpool, and Cambridge. ~ Erik Larson

I don't make friends with the girls I'm playing against. It would be too painful to beat them. ~ Virginia Wade

The People of Virginia declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression and that every. ~ Henry Adams

Liberty is not the unique right of Americans or even Westerners, but is mankind's right. ~ Virginia Foxx

When silence greets you, listen for those powerful words lost within the void of reason... ~ Virginia Alison

And what of the dead? I own that I thought of myself, at times, almost as dead. Are they not locked below ground in chambers smaller than mine was, in their millions of millions? There is no category of human activity in which the dead do not outnumber the living many times over. Most beautiful children are dead. Most soldiers, most cowards. The fairest women and the most learned men – all are dead. Their bodies repose in caskets, in sarcophagi, beneath arches of rude stone, everywhere under the earth. Their spirits haunt our minds, ears pressed to the bones of our foreheads. Who can say how intently they listen as we speak, or for what word? ~ Gene Wolfe

Virginia was working in the garden, and her husband Leonard called out for her to come inside, that Hitler was just about to speak on the radio.

Virginia refused. "I am planting irises," she said, "and they will be here long after Hitler is gone."


And they are. You can go see the irises at their house, still blooming. ~ Connie Willis

Not a good night for President Obama. He lost elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and he's not doing good in Afghanistan either. ~ Jay Leno

The first American ancestor of our name was a younger son of these old Devonshire people, and came to the Virginia colony in the reign of Charles the First. ~ John Sergeant Wise