Quote

Books should stand on their own feet ... If they need shoring up by a preface here, an introduction there, they have no more right to exist than a table that needs a wad of paper under one leg in order to stand steady.

Virginia Woolf

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Virginia Woolf
Age: 59 †
Born: 1882
Born: January 25
Died: 1941
Died: March 28
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Essayist
Feminist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Publisher
Short Story Writer
Writer
London
England
Virxhinia Ulf
Virginia yo juanito Adeline Woolf
Virg̔inyah Vold
Virdžiniâ Vulf
Virdzhiniia Vulf
Virzhinia Ulf
Virginia Stephen
Virzhin︠iia Ulf
Adeline Virginia Stephen
Virginyah Volf
Adeline Virginia Woolf
Virginia Adeline Woolf
Adeline Virginia Stephen Woolf
Birtzinia Gulph
Virginia Stephen Woolf
Woolf
Virginia
1882-1941
Stand
Introduction
Books
Steady
Order
Table
Book
Tables
Need
Legs
Right
Exist
Needs
Paper
Shoring
Feet
Preface

More quotes by Virginia Woolf

Image
To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries.
Virginia Woolf
Image
... it's been a perpetual discovery, my life. A miracle.
Virginia Woolf
Image
The mind must be allowed to settle undisturbed over the object in order to secrete the pearl.
Virginia Woolf
Image
So that is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman looking at a girl throwing a ball
Virginia Woolf
Image
It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of woman's life is that.
Virginia Woolf
Image
As an experience, madness is terrific ... and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about.
Virginia Woolf
Image
All the months are crude experiments, out of which the perfect September is made.
Virginia Woolf
Image
There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay.
Virginia Woolf
Image
Love ought to stop on both sides, don’t you think, simultaneously?’ He spoke without any stress on the words, so as not to wake the sleepers. ‘But it won’t - that’s the devil,’ he added in the same undertone.
Virginia Woolf
Image
Does Nature supplement what man advanced? Or does she complete what he began?
Virginia Woolf
Image
Lines slip easily down the accustomed grooves. The old designs are copied so glibly that we are half inclined to think them original, save for that very glibness.
Virginia Woolf
Image
To stand in a great bookshop crammed with books so new that their pages almost stick together, and the gilt on their backs is still fresh, has an excitement no less delightful than the old excitement of the second-hand bookstall.
Virginia Woolf
Image
To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father.
Virginia Woolf
Image
What could be more serious than the love of man for woman, what more commanding, more impressive, bearing in its bosom the seeds of death at the same time these lovers, these people entering into illusion glittering eyed, must be danced round with mockery, decorated with garlands.
Virginia Woolf
Image
The artist after all is a solitary being.
Virginia Woolf
Image
Talents of the novelist: ... observation of character, analysis of emotion, people's feelings, personal relations.
Virginia Woolf
Image
Literature is no one’s private ground, literature is common ground let us trespass freely and fearlessly and find our own way for ourselves.
Virginia Woolf
Image
She belonged to a different age, but being so entire, so complete, would always stand up on the horizon, stone-white, eminent, like a lighthouse marking some past stage on this adventurous, long, long voyage, this interminable --- this interminable life.
Virginia Woolf
Image
Intellectual freedom depends upon material things.
Virginia Woolf
Image
Friendships, even the best of them, are frail things. One drifts apart.
Virginia Woolf