I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.
Virginia WoolfRead
Of course, literature is the only spiritual and humane career. Even painting tends to dumness, and music turns people erotic, whereas the more you write the nicer you become.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Virginia Woolf argues that literature is the highest form of human expression that fosters spirituality and humanity.
In this quote, Virginia Woolf emphasizes the unique capacity of literature to enrich the human spirit and enhance our moral character. While other art forms, such as painting and music, may invoke different emotions or states, literature is presented as a noble pursuit that cultivates kindness and sensitivity in individuals, suggesting that the act of writing not only benefits the writer but also contributes positively to society.
Themes
LiteratureWritingHumanityArtSpirituality
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of literature for personal development.
More from Virginia Woolf
All quotes βDeath is woven in with the violets,β said Louis. βDeath and again death.β)
Virginia WoolfRead
He began to search among the infinite series of impressions which time had laid down, leaf upon leaf, fold upon fold softly, incessantly upon his brain; among scents, sounds; voices, harsh, hollow, sweet; and lights passing, and brooms tapping; and the wash and hush of the sea.
Virginia WoolfRead
I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts.
Virginia WoolfRead
I do think all good and evil comes from words. I have to tune myself into a good temper with something musical, and I run to a book as a child to its mother.
Virginia WoolfRead
London perpetually attracts, stimulates, gives me a play and a story and a poem, without any trouble, save that of moving my legs through the streets... To walk alone through London is the greatest rest.
Virginia WoolfRead
Similar quotes
Yes, every venture is always filled with apprehensions. But if we were to conduct ourselves continuously on that aspect, then we would lose the most important reason to be in this profession: to challenge the art of and be part of what is commonly known as our creative instincts.
Amitabh BachchanRead
At heart I've always been a music fan. That part of me has never changed since I was a little kid, sitting in a room watching a record go round, looking at the colour of the labels.
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The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit nature⦠the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.
H. L. MenckenRead
Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing -to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.
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I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art.
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The artist should preach nothing-not even his own autonomy. His art should speak its own truth, and in so doing it will be in harmony with every other kind of truth- moral, metaphysical, mystical.
Thomas MertonRead