The Waves

by Virginia Woolf
England
25 Jan 1882 // 28 Mar 1941
Writer

Quotes

Next >>

The weight of the world is on our shoulders, its vision is through our eyes; if we blink or look aside, or turn back to finger what Plato said or remember Napoleon and his conquests, we inflict on the world the injury of some obliquity. This is life...

The Waves
Our friends - how distant, how mute, how seldom visited and little known. And I, too, am dim to my friends and unknown; a phantom, sometimes seen, often not. Life is a dream surely.

The Waves
I do not want to be admired. I want to give, to be given, and solitude in which to unfold my possessions.

The Waves
That would be a glorious life, to addict oneself to perfection; to follow the curve of the sentence wherever it might lead, into deserts, under drifts of sand, regardless of lures, of seductions; to be poor always and unkempt; to be ridiculous in Piccadilly.

The Waves
Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet.

The Waves
I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on pavement.

The Waves
I need silence, and to be alone and to go out, and to save one hour to consider what has happened to my world, what death has done to my world.

The Waves
Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched�love for instance � we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next.

The Waves
I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.

The Waves
Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body.

The Waves
Next >>
Search
On Amazon

The Waves

Virginia Woolf

 

On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays