Oh, Virginia!
She is the reason why I’m so passionate about the female side of literature.
Thanks to A Room of One’s Own I decided to investigate the ramifications of history, to discover and bring to light all the wonderful women that have been buried under a thick layer of ― I don’t want to sound rude, but yeah ― men.
And I’m not saying that the works of their counterparts were mediocre or worse, I’m just saying that after reading and seeing over and over again the works of men, who also talked about the female lives, feelings, and manners; at some point I wondered why I wasn’t reading about the female experience from the right perspective ― that of the women who were living it.
Obviously ― as Virginia Woolf pointed out in her numerous essays and A Room of One’s Own ― the reason is simple and yet so unsettling: women weren’t allowed to do this kind of creative work, most of them weren’t even alphabetized, and so on.
But, for the ones that did have an education and proceeded to utilize it…their work was still overshadowed by their male counterparts.
However, I’m on a mission.
I will explore the work of all the incredible women writers from the past to amplify their voices.
Virginia Woolf has been and always will be my creative guiding light!
Enjoy!
❤️
As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.
― Three Guineas
To be 29 and unmarried — to be a failure — childless— insane, too, no writer… Why is life so tragic; so like a little strip of pavement over an abyss?
It’s having no children, living away from friends, failing to write well.
― From a letter to her sister, Vanessa Bell, 1911
I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.
I enjoy almost everything. Yet I have some restless searcher in me. Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay hands on and say “This is it”? My depression is a harassed feeling. I’m looking: but that’s not it — that’s not it. What is it? And shall I die before I find it?
― A Writer's Diary
Happiness is to have a little strong onto which things will attach themselves…as if dipped loosely into a wave of treasure to bring up pearls sticking to it.
― from her journal, April 1925
Fame grows. Chances of meeting this person, doing that thing, accumulate. Life is, as I’ve said since I was ten, awfully interesting …
― from her journal, November 1926
I thought about how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.
― A Room of One’s Own
My position is quite simple. If the house is on fire one does not ask first who is to be blamed for the conflagration; one puts it out. My heart is afire.
― The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Three, 1923-1928
You cannot find peace by avoiding life.
Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.
― Street Haunting
Success, I believe, produces a kind of modesty. It frees you from bothering about yourself.
― from her journal, October 1919
Nothing is so strange when one is in love…as the complete indifference of other people.
― Mrs Dalloway
I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up in a little world of one’s own, with pictures and music and everything beautiful.
— The Voyage Out
Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.
The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.
— Monday or Tuesday
One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.
— The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Three, 1923-1928
The better a thing is expressed, the more completely it is thought.
— from a Letter to Janet Case, 1925
Talk of solitude (...). It is the last resort of the civilised: our souls are so creased and soured in meaning we can only unfold them when we are alone.
— from a Letter to Vita Sackville-West, 1927
When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to matter very much, do they?
— Night and Day
Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
— A Room of One’s Own
No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.
— Three Guineas
It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman manly, or a man womanly.
— A Room of One’s Own
Once she knows how to read there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in and that is herself.
— Monday or Tuesday
As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.
— Orlando
But how entirely I live in my imagination; how completely depend upon spurts of thought, coming as I walk, as I sit; things churning up in my mind and so making a perpetual pageant, which is to be my happiness.
― A Writer's Diary
So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.
― A Room of One’s Own
There is a certain 'beauty' in illness - one is alone - one reads - one thinks - one sees only the people one like seeing.
― from a Letter to Duncan Grant, 1928
Never pretend that the things you haven't got are not worth having.
― The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Two: 1920-1924
There's no doubt in my mind that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice; and that interests me so that I feel I can go ahead without praise.
― The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Two: 1920-1924
What does the brain matter compared with the heart?
― Mrs. Dalloway
What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me! I went in and found the table laden with books. I looked in and sniffed them all. I could not resist carrying this one off and broaching it. I think I could happily live here and read forever.
― A Writer's Diary
I don’t believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun.
― A Writer’s Diary
It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.
― Professions for women, lecture, 1942
...and to forget one's own sharp absurd little personality, reputation and the rest of it, one should read; see outsiders; think more; write more logically; above all be full of work; and practise anonymity. Silence in company; or the quietest statement, not the showiest; is also "medicated" as the doctors say. It was an empty party, rather, last night. Very nice here, though.
― A Writer's Diary
What is the meaning of life? That was all — a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.
— To The Lighthouse
The only prescription for me is to have a thousand interests.
― A Writer's Diary
I am rooted, but I flow.
— The Waves
I hope you enjoyed this little collection of Virginia Woolf’s words.
Wishing you a wonderful rest of the week!
Nicole
She's quite the astute one; many of these quotes resonate! Especially that one about a deep-seated desire for more than daily banality—gosh I feel that.
I loved this so much. I have still yet to read Virginia Woolf, but I am determined to read more books by women in the past whose voices were buried or silenced. Love following your newsletter! 🤎