Quotes from Virginia Woolf

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.

Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone.

All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

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

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!

I need silence, and to be alone and to go out, and to save one hour to consider what has happened to my world, what death has done to my world.

After that, how unbelievable death was! - that is must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all.

Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.

You send a boy to school in order to make friends - the right sort.

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.

Nothing, I know, had any chance against death.

A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

She dares me to pour myself out like a living waterfall. She dares me to enter the soul that is more than my own; she extinguishes fear in mere seconds. She lets light come through.

Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall

Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.

Intellectual freedom depends upon material things.

Alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know

To enjoy freedom ... we have of course to control ourselves. We must not squander our powers, helplessly and ignorantly, squirting half the house in order to water a single rose.

O friendship, I too will press flowers between the pages of Shakespeare's sonnets!

To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.

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