Virginia Woolf Quotes

Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face – there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes. Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself. The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.

I've a full-length triple-panel mirror in which I can see every possible angle, and I spend quite a lot of time in front of it.

People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too ... Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose.

They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurance of our identities?

The world has become uglier since it began to look into a mirror every day; so let us settle for the mirror image and do without an inspection of the original.

Edith Sitwell's interest in art was largely confined to portraits of herself.

Remember it's all just a mirror we made to see ourselves in.

The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.

I wonder if the course of narcissism through the ages would have been any different had Narcissus first peered into a cesspool. He probably did.

We are the mirror - As well as the face in it.

I mean one of the things about being alone is that you've no people to define yourself off, I mean, people are like all-round mirrors, because let's face it, we don't often see ourselves all round in a mirror anyway, do we.

I find mirrors detestable; I dislike seeing myself. Of course, there's a mirror in the bathroom, but it's a magnifying one for shaving. Photographs are fine, but I don't like mirrors because they take you by surprise.

I loathe narcissism, but I approve of vanity.

Mirrors are ice which do not melt: what melts are those who admire themselves in them.

It's such a weird thing: to sit and look at yourself is so distracting to the psyche. It would be like me standing in front of a mirror and looking at myself all day, trying to find a flaw.

There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

I spend so much time in front of mirrors as part of my job that I try to avoid them outside work.

It's impossible not to constantly adjust the way you look at yourself.

You have to ask yourself a lot of questions and probably go to therapy to make sure that you're not someone who's in love with themselves. And also if you're vain enough, then you know that is a bad look!

You know what keeps me humble? Mirrors!

It is 11 years since I have seen my figure in a glass [mirror]. The last reflection I saw there was so disagreeable I resolved to spare myself such mortification in the future.

There could be no extreme vanity in my recognition of myself, if in fact there could be any at all.

Actors and actresses who say they never go to see their own pictures are talking through their hats. You don't have to be a Freud to know that the most fascinating person in the world - actors or anybody - is yourself.

One of the greatest things my therapist said to me ... and it really blew my mind in the greatest way, he just said, "Look in the mirror less."

This autobiography of mine is a mirror, and I am looking at myself in it all the time. Incidentally I notice the people that pass along at my back - I get glimpses of them in the mirror - and whenever they say or do anything that can help advertise me and flatter me and raise me in my own estimation, I set these things down in my autobiography.