Virginia Woolf Quotes

Who apart from the gods is without pain for his whole lifetime's length?

The flesh, alas, is sad, and I have read all the books.

At the root of everything I write is tragedy.

It is the lot of man to suffer; it is also his fortune to forget. Oblivion and sorrow share our being, as darkness and light divide the course of time.

What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.

...I am the immense shadow of my tears

I really have no idea where the darkness comes from. Other writers have said that there are two subjects worth writing about, love and death; and since I'm a complete flop when it comes to love, I chose death. Too, maybe because of where I came from, I do find it easy to empathise with and write about certain groups of damaged or downtrodden people: the poor, the addicted.

Life is the saddest thing there is, next to death.

So sadness is a place?' Giovanni asked. 'Sometimes people live there for years,'I said.

Somewhere in him, a shadow turned mournfully over. You had to run with a night like this so the sadness could not hurt

Darkness does not leave us easily as we would hope.

It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion.

The dull pain of truth weights my soul, pulling it under. I am left hopelessly awake.

Some were beggars, some were kings, and some were masters of the arts. But in their shame they're all the same, these men with broken hearts.

The music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways.

There are moments of despair that come sometimes, when night sets in and a white fog presses against the windows. Then our house changes its shape, rears up and becomes a place of despair. Then fear and rage run simply--and the thought of Death as a friend. This is the simplest of thoughts, that Death must come when we call, although he is a god.

And now I may dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, which is the true heroine's portion - to a pillow strewed with thorns and wet with tears. And lucky may she think herself, if she get another good night's rest in the course of the next three months.

...the heart has no tears to give,--it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence.

In great misfortunes, people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love--if once one has ever fallen in.

So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.

Now I know that grief is a whetstone that sharpens all your love, all your happiest memories, into blades that tear you apart from within.

What I try to write about are the darkest things in the soul, the mortal dreads... The closer I get to the burning core of my being, the things which are most painful to me, the better is my work.