Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels for grown-up people.
Virginia WoolfFor the young people could not talk. And why should they? Shout, embrace, swing, be up at dawn.
Virginia WoolfIf behind the erratic gunfire of the press the author felt that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of people readingfor the love of reading, slowly and unprofessionally, and judging with great sympathy and yet with great severity, might this not improve the quality of his work? And if by our means books were to become stronger, richer, and more varied, that would be an end worth reaching.
Virginia WoolfThe chief glory of a woman is not to be talked of, said Pericles, himself a much-talked-of-man.
Virginia WoolfI went from one to the other holding my sorrow - no, not my sorrow but the incomprehensible nature of this our life - for their inspection. Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken - I to whom there is no beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all, yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, so unspeakably lonely.
Virginia Woolf