30 Best Virginia Woolf Quotes To Inspire You

Let’s explore into Virginia Woolf quotes and sayings about love, life, writing and feminism to inspire you.

Virginia Woolf, born on January 25, 1882, was a remarkable writer known for her ability to write about a wide range of topics. From discussing the foolishness of war to exploring the joys of love, Woolf had a unique way of dissecting life’s complexities.

She was best known for her novels, especially Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927). She also wrote pioneering essays on artistic theory, literary history, women’s writing, and the politics of power.

Here, we’ve gathered 40 of her most powerful lines, showcasing her talent as one of the greatest writers of all time.

Top 10 Virginia Woolf Quotes

1. “I am rooted, but I flow.” — Virginia Woolf 

   
2. “Unless I am myself, I am nobody.” — Virginia Woolf 

   

3. “It’s my choice, to choose how to live my life.” — Virginia Woolf 

   

4. “Books are the mirrors of the soul.” — Virginia Woolf

   

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

   

6. “Arrange whatever pieces come your way.” — Virginia Woolf 

   

7. “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” — Virginia Woolf 

   

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

   

9. “Nothing has really happened until it has been described.” — Virginia Woolf 

   

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

    

Best Quotes By Virginia Woolf

1. “A light here required a shadow there.” — Virginia Woolf
2. “As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.” — Virginia Woolf
3. “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” — Virginia Woolf
4. “Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.” — Virginia Woolf
5. “Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.” — Virginia Woolf
6. “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
7. “Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.” — Virginia Woolf
8. “Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.” — Virginia Woolf
9. “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
10. “There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we, them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking.” — Virginia Woolf

Famous Virginia Woolf Quotes

1. “Language is wine upon the lips.” — Virginia Woolf
2. “Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.” — Virginia Woolf
3. “What does the brain matter compared with the heart?” — Virginia Woolf,  Mrs. Dalloway
4. “The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.” — Virginia Woolf
5. “Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us.” — Virginia Woolf
6. “Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.” — Virginia Woolf
7. “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” — Virginia Woolf
8. “Why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women?” — Virginia Woolf
9. “I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.” — Virginia Woolf
10. “I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.” — Virginia Woolf

Famous Virginia Woolf Quotes From Her Novels

1. “All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.” —  Orlando
2. “It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels.” ― Mrs. Dalloway
3. “Yes, I deserve a spring–I owe nobody nothing.” —  A Writer’s Diary
4. “To love makes one solitary.” ― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
5. “Nothing thicker than a knife’s blade separates happiness from melancholy.” —  Orlando
6. “There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, ‘Consume me’.” — The Waves
7. “No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.” —  A Room of One’s Own / Three Guineas
8. “For the film maker must come by his convention, as painters and writers and musicians have done before him.” — Selected Essays
9. “I am not one and simple, but complex and many.” ― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
10. “As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.” ― Virginia Woolf

Conclusion

Did you enjoy reading these famous quotes by Virginia Woolf ? Which of these quotes are your favorite? If you have read her novels and if there a quote that we’ve missed then please let us know in the comments section below.

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