Virginia Woolf Quotes

Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place - and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all - so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.

The world consists of images on a screen, and consciousness is the steady light that emanates from the projector.

Perception and reality are two different things.

If this book has made any point clear, I hope it's that things don't have to be real to be true. Or vice versa.

Truth is only a question of point of view.

There are other relations besides reality, which the mind is capable of grasping and which also are primary, like chance, illusion, the fantastic, the dream.

The appearance of things to the mind is the standard of every action to man.

Life and death are nothing but the mind. Years, months, days, and hours are nothing but the mind. Dreams, illusions, and mirages are nothing but the mind. The bubbles of water and the flames of fire are nothing but the mind. The flowers of the spring and the moon of the autumn are nothing but the mind. Confusions and dangers are nothing but the mind.

Truth, like light is dazzling. By contrast, untruth is a beautiful sunset that enhances everything.

They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?

We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it.

No, that’s journalism. The truth is whatever you can’t escape.

Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.

Imagination comes from yourself and can deceive you, but vision is a gift from outside yourself - like light striking on your closed eyelids and lifting them to see what's really there.

Reality is negotiable.

Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments.

You imagine the carefully pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth. That is just what it isn't. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic; it's in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth.

Reality is inside the skull.

Truth is like heat or light; its vibrations are endless, and are endlessly felt.

People make their own reality. That was what Praxis had taught him years ago. A hundred people can witness the exact same event, and give two hundred and three different accountings of it.

Whether you are really right or not doesn't matter; it's the belief that counts.

I'm fascinated by the mysterious element that runs through our lives. Everyone is looking out of the world through their emotion and history. Nobody has an absolute reality.

As for all I can tell, the only difference is that what many see we call a real thing, and what only one sees we call a dream.

Faith is simply whatever is real to us.

In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen.