The collection / 488 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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488 results · Page 3 of 21Play this collection ▷

01Undated

Death is woven in with the violets,” said Louis. “Death and again death.”)

Virginia Woolf / quote

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02Undated

Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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03Undated

They say the sky is the same everywhere. Travellers, the shipwrecked, exiles, and the dying draw comfort from the thought[.]

Virginia Woolf / quote

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04Undated

Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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05Undated

A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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06Undated

Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?

Virginia Woolf / quote

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07Undated

Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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08Undated

My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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09Undated

It is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in time to it along the road.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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10Undated

Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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11Undated

To evade such temptations is the first duty of the poet. For as the ear is the antechamber to the soul, poetry can adulterate and destroy more surely then lust or gunpowder. The poet's, then, is the highest office of all. His words reach where others fall short. A silly song of Shakespeare's has done more for the poor and the wicked than all the preachers and philanthropists in the world.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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12Undated

For it has come about, by the wise economy of nature, that our modern spirit can almost dispense with language; the commonest expressions do, since no expressions do; hence the most ordinary conversation is often the most poetic, and the most poetic is precisely that which cannot be written down.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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13Undated

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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14Undated

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 / quote

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15Undated

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

Virginia Woolf / quote

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16Undated

For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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17Undated

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 / quote

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18Undated

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

Virginia Woolf / quote

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19Undated

For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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20Undated

Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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21Undated

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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22Undated

A fine gentleman like that, they said, had no need of books. Let him leave books, they said, to the palsied or the dying. But worse was to come. For once the disease of reading has laid hold upon the system it weakens it so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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23Undated

All the time she writing the world had continued.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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24Undated

One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over a hairpin.

Virginia Woolf / quote

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