#virginia

I was immensely moved by this novel when I read it recently and yet I cannot think of anything to say about it except that it is wonderful. The people are not characters, there is no plot in the usual sense. What can you bring to bear: verisimilitude — to what? You can merely say over and over that it is very good, very beautiful, that when you were reading it you were happy. ↗

— Elizabeth Hardwick

#virginia-woolf #beauty

What is more irritating than to see one’s subject, on whom one has lavished so much time and trouble, slipping out of one’s grasp altogether and indulging — witness her sighs and gasps, her flushing, her palings, her eyes now bright as lamps, now haggard as dawns — what is more humiliating than to see all this dumb show of emotion and excitement gone through before our eyes when we know that what causes it — thought and imagination — are of no importance whatsoever? ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#imagination

When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#inspirational #language #virginia-woolf #writing-philosophy #inspirational

Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#men

They all dreamt of each other that night, as was natural, considering how thin the partitions were between them, and how strangely they had been lifted off the earth to sit next each other in mid-ocean, and see every detail of each others' faces, and hear whatever they chanced to say. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#novel #the-voyage-out #virginia-woolf #woolf #nature

And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#fiction #modern-fiction #virginia-woolf #art

I now teach at American University and the University of Virginia. ↗

— Julian Bond

#i #now #teach #university #virginia

Then it was that the exports of slaves from Virginia and the Carolinas was so great that the population of those States remained almost, if not quite stationary. ↗

— Henry Charles Carey

#carolinas #exports #great #population #quite

Virginia Woolf came along in the early part of the century and essentially said through her writing, yes, big books can be written about the traditional big subjects. There is war. There is the search for God. These are all very important things. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#along #big #books #came #century

Men of Virginia, countrymen of Washington, of Patrick Henry, of Jefferson, and of Madison, will ye be true to your constitutional faith? ↗

— Caleb Cushing

#constitutional #countrymen #faith #henry #jefferson