Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer born on January 25, 1882. Later, I will list the best Virginia Woolf quotes. He grew up in a big family and was homeschooled. She was thought about English classics and Victorian literature. At 15 years old, she went to the Department of King’s College London to study classics and history. There, she became part of the women’s higher education and women’s rights movement.
At 18 years old, she starts writing professionally with her father’s encouragement. However, a few years later, her father died. She then became part of the Bloomsbury Group which focuses on artistry and literature.
Woolf is known for her books titled Mrs Dalloway, A Room of One’s Own, The Lighthouse, The Voyage Out, and Orlando: A Biography. Her writing style is focused on the stream of consciousness as a narrative device. This means that the lead persona in her books is narrating the story.
Woolf’s artistic Bloomsbury Group was very progressive and many of its members were homosexual or bisexual. Woolf herself has been very open to her attractiveness to women and prefer their company over men. As a victim of sexual abuse by her half brothers, she never found sexual attraction towards men.
However, a long time suitor Leonard Woolf was eager to marry Virginia. After trying to push him away and even telling him that she was not attracted to him, she eventually agreed to get married.
Virginia and Leonard never had children. However, they have always been honest and open about their love for each other. They were, in today’s world called in an “open marriage”. They both acknowledge that while they are not faithful to each other sexually, they are faithful to their love for one another. As a couple, they opened their own publishing house.
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COMPILATION OF VIRGINIA WOOLF QUOTES AND CAPTIONS
Enjoy this list of quotes from Virginia Woolf about life, sexism, writing, and more. Check out these posters, book, and bookmark with Virginia quotes in them.
“As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”
“Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.”
“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
“Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.”
“Nothing has really happened until it has been described.”
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well if one has not dined well.”
“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
“Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.”
“Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.”
Woolf battled depression since the age of 13 when her mother passed away. While she met many doctors and was examined thoroughly, in the end, she was diagnosed as “not mad” and was only struggling.
A few after that, she became better and managed on her own. Her relapse came when her father died in 1904. At that time she jumped out of the window and was taken into an institution.
During World War II, her work was deeply affected. Her house that she shared with Leonard in London was bombed from blitzing. All these caused her mental health to deteriorate.
On March 28, 1941, Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with rocks and drowned herself in River Ouse. She was not found until 3 weeks later. In her suicide note, she wrote:
Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight it any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.
I hope that you found this collection of Virginia Woolf quotes inspiring and helpful.