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There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay.... the essay must be pure--pure like water or pure like wine, but pure from dullness, deadness, and deposits of extraneous matter.

Virginia Woolf

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Virginia Woolf
Age: 59 †
Born: 1882
Born: January 25
Died: 1941
Died: March 28
Author
Autobiographer
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Essayist
Feminist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Publisher
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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
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Deadness
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Water
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Essays

More quotes by Virginia Woolf

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We seem to be riding on the top of the highest mast of the tallest ship and yet at the same time we know that nothing of this sort matters love is not proved thus, nor great achievements completed thus so that we sport with the moment and preen our feathers in it lightly.
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To love makes one solitary.
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Each had his own business to think of. 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.
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The most extraordinary thing about writing is that when you've struck the right vein, tiredness goes. It must be an effort, thinking wrong.
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... why do people who live in the country always give themselves such airs?
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My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness.
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And yet, the only exciting life is the imaginary one.
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For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think well not even to think. To be silent to be alone.
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The chief glory of a woman is not to be talked of, said Pericles, himself a much-talked-of-man.
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It is no use trying to sum people up. One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done.
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Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.
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Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in it's place?
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She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.
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Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down.
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This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.
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Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact the fertile fact the fact that suggests and engenders.
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Those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, euphemistically, as the stately homes of England.
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O how blessed it would be never to marry, or grow old but to spend one's life innocently and indifferently among the trees and rivers which alone can keep one cool and childlike in the midst of the troubles of the world!
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The streets of London have their map, but our passions are uncharted. What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?
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Language is wine upon the lips.
Virginia Woolf