“Melancholy were the sounds on a winter's night.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“It is no use trying to sum people up.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now. One does, I think, as one gets older.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“Indeed there has never been any explanation of the ebb and flow in our veins--of happiness and unhappiness.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“It seems that a profound, impartial, and absolutely just opinion of our fellow-creatures is utterly unknown. Either we are men, or we are women. Either we are cold, or we are sentimental. Either we are young, or growing old. In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows. And why, if this -- and much more than this is true -- why are we yet surprised in the window corner by a sudden vision that the young man in the chair is of all things in the world the most real, the most solid, the best known to us--why indeed? For the moment after we know nothing about him.
Such is the manner of our seeing. Such the conditions of our love.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“Every face, every shop, bedroom window, public-house, and dark square is a picture feverishly turned--in search of what? It is the same with books. What do we seek through millions of pages?”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“anyone who’s worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“I like books whose virtue is all drawn together in a page or two. I like sentences that don't budge though armies cross them. ”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“Fatigue is the safest sleeping draught.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“Venerable are letters, infinitely brave, forlorn, and lost.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“It was the intimacy, a sort of spiritual suppleness, when mind prints upon mind indelibly.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it. The streets of London have their map; but our passions are uncharted. What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“Nobody sees any one as he is, let alone an elderly lady sitting opposite a strange young man in a railway carriage. They see a whole--they see all sorts of things--they see themselves...”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us. To gallop intemperately; fall on the sand tired out; to feel the earth spin; to have - positively - a rush of friendship for stones and grasses, as if humanity were over, and as for men and women, let them go hang - there is no getting over the fact that this desire seizes up pretty often.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“Anyhow, whether undergraduate or shop boy, man or woman, it must come as a shock about the age of twenty—the world of the elderly—thrown up in such black outline upon what we are; upon the reality; the moors and Byron; the sea and the lighthouse; the sheep’s jaw with the yellow teeth in it; upon the obstinate irrepressible conviction which makes youth so intolerably disagreeable—“I am what I am, and intend to be it,” for which there will be no form in the world unless Jacob makes one for himself. The Plumers will try to prevent him from making it. Wells and Shaw and the serious sixpenny weeklies will sit on its head.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“The voice had an extraordinary sadness. Pure from all body, pure from all passion, going out into the world, solitary, unanswered, breaking against rocks—so it sounded.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“Kind old ladies assure us that cats are often the best judges of character. A cat will always go to a good man, they say[.]”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“Let us consider letters - how they come at breakfast, and at night, with their yellow stamps and their green stamps, immortalized by the postmark - for to see one's own envelope on another's table is to realize how soon deeds sever and become alien. Then at last the power of the mind to quit the body is manifest, and perhaps we fear or hate or wish annihilated this phantom of ourselves, lying on the table. Still, there are letters that merely say how dinner's at seven; others ordering coal; making appointments. The hand in them is scarcely perceptible, let alone the voice or the scowl. Ah, but when the post knocks and the letter comes always the miracle seems repeated - speech attempted. Venerable are letters, infinitely brave, forlorn, and lost.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“I am what I am, and intend to be it,' for which there will be no form in the world unless Jacob makes one for himself.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“Venerable are letters, infinitely brave, forlorn, and lost.
Life would split asunder without them. "Come to tea, come to dinner, what's the truth of the story? have you heard the news? life in the capital is gay; the Russian dancers...." These are our stays and props. These lace our days together and make of life a perfect globe. And yet, and yet... when we go to dinner, when pressing finger-tips we hope to meet somewhere soon, a doubt insinuates itself; is this the way to spend our days? the rare, limited, so soon dealt out to us - drinking tea? dining out? And the notes accumulate. And the telephones ring. And everywhere we go wires and tubes surround us to carry the voices that try to penetrate before the last card is dealt. "Try to penetrate" for as we lift the cup, shake the hand, express the hope, something whispers, Is this all? Can I never know, share, be certain? Am I doomed all my days to write letters, send voices, which fall upon the tea-table, fade upon the passage, making appointments, while life dwindles, to come and dine? Yet letters are venerable; and the telephone valiant, for the journey is a lonely one, and if bound together by notes and telephones we went in company, perhaps- who know? - we might talk by the way.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“For centuries the writing-desk has contained sheets fit precisely for the communication of friends. Masters of language, poets of long ages, have turned from the sheet that endures to the sheet that perishes, pushing aside the tea-tray, drawing close to the fire (for letters are written when the dark presses around a bright red cave), and addressed themselves the task of reaching, touching, penetrating the individual heart.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“Why, from the very windows, even in the dusk, you see a swelling run through the street, an aspiration, as with arms outstretched, eyes desiring, mouths agape. And then we peaceably subside. For if the exaltation lasted we should be blown like foam into the air. The stars would shine through us. We should go down the gale in salt drops- as sometimes happens. For the impetuous spirits will have none of this cradling. Never any swaying or aimlessly lolling for them. Never any making believe, or lying cosily, or genially supposing that one is much like another, fire warm, wine pleasant, extravagance a sin.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
“What's the use trying to read Shakespeare, especially in one of those little paper editions whose pages get ruffled, or stuck together with sea-water?”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Jacob's Room
Virginia Woolf
Born place: in Kensington, Middlesex, England, The United Kingdom
Born date January 25, 1882
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“First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons — but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world — a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring — this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.
Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else — but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.
It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.”
― Carson McCullers, quote from The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories
“In my opinion, wounds are like water boiled--they heal best left unwatched.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
“Hesitation is a mistake that invites defeat. I would not be Mord-Sith had I not hesitated when I was young." - Cara”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Chainfire
“If I behave as though this is a completely normal situation, then maybe it will be ...”
― Sophie Kinsella, quote from Shopaholic Takes Manhattan
“The world should take note: not everything is getting worse.”
― Ian McEwan, quote from Saturday
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The Book of Awesome
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