Virginia Woolf Quotes About Literature

We have collected for you the TOP of Virginia Woolf's best quotes about Literature! Here are collected all the quotes about Literature starting from the birthday of the Writer – January 25, 1882! We hope you will be inspired to new achievements with our constantly updated collection of quotes. At the moment, this page contains 18 sayings of Virginia Woolf about Literature. We will be happy if you share our collection of quotes with your friends on social networks!
  • And again she felt alone in the presence of her old antagonist, life.

    Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.306, Wordsworth Editions
  • The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.

    Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.859, Delphi Classics
  • The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw. One must get out of life...one must become externalised; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one's character, living in the brain.

    Writing  
  • There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay.

    Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.12, Oxford University Press
  • Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels for grown-up people.

    1925 The Common Reader, 'George Eliot'.
  • A biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many as a thousand.

    Orlando ch. 6 (1928)
  • A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.

    Writing  
    1925 The Common Reader, 'The Modern Essay'.
  • This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

    Writing  
    Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4409, Delphi Classics
  • Of course, literature is the only spiritual and humane career. Even painting tends to dumness, and music turns people erotic, whereas the more you write the nicer you become.

    Writing  
    Virginia Woolf (1991). “Paper Darts”
  • Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

    Writing  
    A Room of One's Own (1929) ch. 3
  • 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 (1992). “A woman's essays: selected essays, volume one”
  • Mr. Beerbohm in his way is perfect ... He has brought personality into literature, not unconsciously and impurely, but so consciously and purely that we do not know whether there is any relation between Max the essayist and Mr. Beerbohm the man. We only know that the spirit of personality permeates every word that he writes ... He is without doubt the prince of his profession.

    Writing  
  • The English tourist in American literature wants above all things something different from what he has at home. For this reason the one American writer whom the English whole-heartedly admire is Walt Whitman. There, you will hear them say, is the real American undisguised. In the whole of English literature there is no figure which resembles his - among all our poetry none in the least comparable to Leaves of Grass

    Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.3129, Delphi Classics
  • 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, Michael H. Whitworth (2014). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.13, Oxford University Press, USA
  • literature is the record of our discontent.

    Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2014, Delphi Classics
  • That complete statement which is literature.

    Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2406, Delphi Classics
  • 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, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.14, Oxford University Press
  • To put it in a nutshell, he was afflicted with a love of literature. It was the fatal nature of this disease to substitute a phantom for reality.

    Virginia Woolf (2006). “Orlando (Annotated): A Biography”, p.123, HMH
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