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Posts Tagged ‘Virginia Woolf quotes’

New Year’s Eve advice from Virginia Woolf: “Stay, this moment”

Posted in diaries, tagged , , , on Saturday 31 December 2022| Leave a Comment »

On Saturday, Dec. 31, 1932, Virginia Woolf wrote a relatively long entry in her diary. I include a portion of that entry here:

This is in fact the last day of 1932, but I am so tired of polishing off Flush–such a pressure on the brain is caused by doing ten pages daily — that I am taking a morning off, & shall use it here, in my lazy way, to sum up the whole of life. By that phrase, one of my colloquialities, I only mean, I wish I could deliver myself of a picture of all my friends, thoughts, doings, projects at this moment . . .

For example, with Julian & Lettice Ramsay last night — why not simply become fluid in their lives, if my own is dim? And to use ones hands & eyes; to talk to people; to be a straw on the river, now & then — passive, not striving to say this is this. If one does not lie back & sum up & say to the moment, this very moment, stay you are so fair, what will be one’s gain, dying? No: stay, this moment. No one ever says that enough. — Diary 4, pp. 134-5.

Read on for Woolf’s New Year’s resolutions for 1931 and 1936.

 

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Share your favorite Woolf quote

Posted in quotes, Woolf societies, tagged , on Monday 8 July 2019| Leave a Comment »

The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain is asking you to share your favorite Woolf quote by posting it on their Facebook page or submitting it via email. Here is the scoop:

“Send in a Woolf quotation, from any of her books. We’ll compile a shortlist and ask you to vote for one of them, and the winning quotation will be posted on this page. It will be interesting to see whether it’s the same as last year, or a different one.

If you can’t quite remember the exact words, we’ll probably be able to help you out – don’t worry if you get them slightly wrong.

So get out your Woolf books and hunt down your favourite quotation (or one of them). You can put it in a public post or email your quote to smhall123@yahoo.co.uk”

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Virginia Woolf inspires writers

Posted in quotes, Virginia Woolf, tagged , on Wednesday 17 April 2019| 2 Comments »

The writing resource Every Writer has posted a list of Virginia Woolf quotes to inspire writers. The list unfortunately fails to list sources of the quotes, which means ringers can sneak in, like the debatable and doubtful one that begins: “Writing is like sex.”

These, of course, are just a drop in the bucket, but it’s a good start and well intended. They plan to add more over time, maybe my favorite:

“The way to rock oneself back into writing is this. First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature. It is a mistake to think that literature can be produced from the raw.” (Diary 8/22/22)

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Sign of the times: Winner is Woolf quote on freedom of thought

Posted in Dalloway Day, quotes, Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, tagged , , , on Wednesday 18 July 2018| Leave a Comment »

The results are in. The winning quote in the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain’s query posted on its Facebook page is:

“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.” – A Room of One’s Own

You can read all four of the quotes short-listed for the competition, which was held in celebration of #DallowayDay. The VWSGB says it will hold a similar vote to celebrate #DallowayDay next year.

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Vote for your favorite Woolf quote on the VWSGB Facebook page

Posted in Dalloway Day, quotes, Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, tagged , , , , , on Friday 13 July 2018| 1 Comment »

As we reported earlier, the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain is asking Woolf readers to vote for their favorite quote via their Facebook page.

Here’s the VWSGB’s Facebook query:

Thanks to all those who emailed or Facebooked their favourite Virginia Woolf quotations. We received a great variety, but have shortlisted the following five. Just vote for your favourite using the number next to it. If you voted earlier, you can choose the same one or another, and you can make your message public or reply privately. But please vote! #vwquotevote

1) Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. (Mrs Dalloway)

2) In the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.
(Mrs Dalloway)

3) Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an hour – landing at the other end without a single hairpin in one’s hair! Shot out at the feet of God entirely naked! Tumbling head over heels in the asphodel meadows like brown paper parcels pitched down a shoot in the post office! With one’s hair flying back like the tail of a race-horse. Yes, that seems to express the rapidity of life, the perpetual waste and repair; all so casual, all so haphazard …
(‘The Mark on the Wall’)

4) 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. (A Room of One’s Own)

5) Nothing is simply one thing. (To the Lighthouse)

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