One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
— A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf was an English writer and one of the most influential modernist authors of the 20th century. She helped pioneer stream of consciousness narration as a literary device.
Born in South Kensington, London, into an affluent and intellectual family, she grew up in a blended household of eight children that included her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell. Educated at home in the English classics, she later attended King's College London, where she studied classics and history and met early advocates for women's rights and education. After her father's death in 1904 she moved with her siblings to Bloomsbury and became a founding member of the Bloomsbury Group. She married Leonard Woolf in 1912, and in 1917 they founded the Hogarth Press. To the Lighthouse and A Room of One's Own are her most quoted works in our library.
Born in South Kensington, London, into an affluent and intellectual family, she grew up in a blended household of eight children that included her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell. Educated at home in the English classics, she later attended King's College London, where she studied classics and history and met early advocates for women's rights and education. After her father's death in 1904 she moved with her siblings to Bloomsbury and became a founding member of the Bloomsbury Group. She married Leonard Woolf in 1912, and in 1917 they founded the Hogarth Press. To the Lighthouse and A Room of One's Own are her most quoted works in our library.
Most quoted works
- To the Lighthouse 65
- A Room of One's Own 48
- Orlando 43
- Mrs. Dalloway 42
- The Waves 39
- Jacob's Room 19
Love, the poet said, is woman's whole existence.
— Orlando
What does the brain matter compared with the heart?
— Mrs. Dalloway
It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.
— Mrs. Dalloway
I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.
— Moments of Being
And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of treesand changing leaves.
— To the Lighthouse
By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. 'Tis the waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.
— Orlando
He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.
— Orlando
First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.
— Mrs. Dalloway
The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice.
— Orlando
in this case, a mother, noted for her beauty, might be reduced to a purple shadow... (Tansley to Lily on her painting of the house & grounds)
— To the Lighthouse
Septimus has been working too hard" - that was all she could say to her own mother. To love makes one solitary, she thought.
— Mrs. Dalloway
Like" and "like" and "like"--but what is the thing that lies beneath the semblance of the thing?
— The Waves
Indeed there has never been any explanation of the ebb and flow in our veins--of happiness and unhappiness.
— Jacob's Room
About here, she thought, dabbling her fingers in the water, a ship had sunk, and she muttered, dreamily half asleep, how we perished, each alone.
— To the Lighthouse
For this moment, this one moment, we are together. I press you to me. Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. I sob, I sob.
— The Waves
They say the sky is the same everywhere. Travellers, the shipwrecked, exiles, and the dying draw comfort from the thought[.]
— Jacob's Room
Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?
— Orlando
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.
— Orlando
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.
— A Room of One's Own
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
— A Room of One's Own
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.
— A Room of One's Own
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.
— A Room of One's Own
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.
— Orlando