Top 50 Virginia Woolf Quotes on Life, Love, Books & Writing

Who was Virginia Woolf?

Virginia Woolf, full name – Adeline Virginia Woolf, was born on January 25, 1882, in London, England. Virginia was an English writer, and she’s considered to be one of the most influential figures in the world of writing. She was recognized to be in those of the great writers and authors who used modern literature in the 20th century. She was from the firsts who used the stream of consciousness as a narrative device in her writings.

Early Life :

Virginia Woolf was born on January 25, 1882, in London. His mother’s name was Julia, and his father’s name was Leslie Stephen. His father was an essayist, historian, biographer, and mountaineer. Her mother was a model born in India. She was also a nurse and also had once written a book about her profession. Both of her parents were widowed before marrying each other.

Work :

Virginia Woolf is considered one of the most important figures of the 20th century in the world of writers. Her style was modern literature, and she was the pioneer of using a stream of consciousness in her narrative device in writing. In the 1970s, she gained her reputation and made it grow during the feminist literary criticism.

Virginia submitted her first written article in the year 1890 to a competition called Tit-Bits, though it was rejected. She transformed herself quickly from being a juvenile to a professional journalist at the age of 22. She started writing for ‘The time’s literary supplement’ in the year 1905. Virginia liked publishing articles as both an intellectual and a critical thinker. Most of her work would be released through the ‘Hogarth Press.’ There is an intensity in the books and writings of her.

Adaptations :

Many of Virginia’s works have been adapted on screen. Her play ‘Freshwater’ made in the year 1935 is adapted and improvised for another game for Chamber opera, ‘Freshwater’ by Andy Vores. The movie ‘London unplugged’ also has its final segment adapted from her short stories called ‘Kew Gardens.’

Virginia Woolf is known to be an influential image for the world of novelists. Many of the writers claim that she has inspired them. She’s widely known for her literary work, particularly on feminist criticism. She is studied and recognized worldwide on a massive scale with universities, ashrams, organizations, and institutions with her name. In this article, we have collected all of the Best Virginia Woolf’s quotes from her best writings and real life.

Compilation of Virginia Quotes

Virginia Woolf quotes on Life :

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
― Virginia Woolf

“I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual.”
― Virginia Woolf

“What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”
― Virginia Woolf

“To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is… at last, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away…”
― Virginia Woolf

“Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.”
― Virginia Woolf

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

“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.”
― Virginia Woolf

“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees
and changing leaves.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Still, life had a way of adding day to day.”
― Virginia Woolf

“It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.”
― Virginia Woolf

“It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.”
― Virginia Woolf

“He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.”
― Virginia Woolf

“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to matter very much, do they?”
― Virginia Woolf

“Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life.”
― Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf Inspirational quotes :

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

“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all be pure.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Arrange whatever pieces come your way.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Once she knows how to read there’s only one thing you can teach her to believe in and that is herself.”
― Virginia Woolf

“I don’t believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun.”
― Virginia Woolf

“I am rooted, but I flow.”
― Virginia Woolf

“A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living.”
― Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf quotes on Love :

“I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you’re everything that exists; the reality of everything.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Love had a thousand shapes.”
― Virginia Woolf

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
― Virginia Woolf

“What does the brain matter compared with the heart?”
― Virginia Woolf

“Just in case you ever foolishly forget; I’m never not thinking of you.”
― Virginia Woolf

“I worship you but I loathe marriage. I hate its smugness, its safety, its compromise and the thought of you interfering with my work, hindering me; what would you answer?”
― Virginia Woolf

“To love makes one solitary.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Friendships, even the best of them, are frail things. One drifts apart.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Love, the poet said, is woman’s whole existence.”
― Virginia Woolf

“They went in and out of each other’s minds without any effort.”
― Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf quotes on Books and Writing :

“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.”
― Virginia Woolf

“As I grow old I hate the writing of letters more and more, and like getting them better and better.”
― Virginia Woolf

“I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.”
― Virginia Woolf

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

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”
― Virginia Woolf

“When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.”
― Virginia Woolf

“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.”
― Virginia Woolf

“I want to write a novel about Silence,’ he said; ‘the things people don’t say.’”
― Virginia Woolf

“How many times have people used a pen or paintbrush because they couldn’t pull the trigger?”
― Virginia Woolf

“As long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.”
― Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf Quotes About Thoughts & Feelings:

“In her eyes shone the sweetness of melancholy.”
― Virginia Woolf

“It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels.”
― Virginia Woolf

“…she wanted many more things than the love of one human being — the sea, the sky.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Thoughts are divine.”
― Virginia Woolf

“All extremes of feeling are allied to madness.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Thoughts without words… Can that be?”
― Virginia Woolf

“In her eyes shone the sweetness of melancholy.”
― Virginia Woolf

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