Virginia Woolf Quotes

I think there's more real in the unreal than there is in the real.

What, concretely, is Enlightenment ?" "Seeing Reality as it is," said the Master. "Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?" "Oh, no! Most people see it as they think it is." "What's the difference?" "The difference between thinking you are drowning in a stormy sea and knowing you cannot drown because there isn't any water in sight for miles around.

Drag is like breaking the fourth wall in theater where we're letting you know straight up that this is an illusion. People are attracted to that because they know it's the truth of who they are also. No one is who they think they are. That's why people are attracted to drag.

I shall start at the beginning. Though of coarse, the beginning is never where you think it is.

I think in fact that unless there is an organic link between the subjective impressions of the author and his objective representation of reality, he will not achieve even superficial credibility, let alone authenticity and inner truth.

I suppose there's something to be said for the sheer reinforcement of our beliefs, but really I think poetry is more useful as disenchantment than enchantment.

Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.

'What is' is more important than 'what should be.' Too many people are looking at 'what is' from a position of thinking 'what should be'.

It can be consoling to think your children are in heaven. You have got to understand that that doesn't make it true. Many people cannot understand that distinction.

People think that they see, but they don't.

Truth is truth no matter what I think.

All you know is what you think you know, but that isn't always what's real.

I was headed for the fantastic lights. No doubt about it. Could it be that I was being deceived? Not likely. I don't think I had enough imagination to be deceived; had no false hope, either. I'd come from a long ways off and had started from a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else.

Keep it real by being straight forward. Don't pull no punches on people. It's better to tell somebody than just lollygag around, letting them think they're living their life the right way. Because some people don't know what the hell they're doing, they don't know if they're living the right way or making the right decisions. Some people don't know that.

You think you know someone. But mostly you just know what you want to know.

You think the shadow is the substance.

Of course, there are different truths on different levels. Things are true relative to other things; "long" and "short" relate to each other, "high" and "low," and so on. But is there any absolute truth? Something self-sufficient, independently true in itself? I don't think so.

The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. Mystery, on the other hand, is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship.

Truth is a naked and open daylight, that does not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. . . A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure

If ignorance were enough to make things not exist, the world would be more like a lot of people think it is. But it's not. And it's not.

idealism, that gaudy coloring matter of passion, fades when it is brought beneath the trenchant white light of knowledge. Ideals, like mountains, are best at a distance.

The world isn't what you think it is.

A thing either is what it appears to be; or it is not, but yet appears to be; or it is, but does not appear to be; or it is not, and does not appear to be.

The only people who become disillusioned are people who have illusions.