Virginia Woolf

Secondhand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.

In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.

"The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."

It reminds me of something a professor of mine once said about people being reluctant to admit that all of our grand emotions can sometimes come down to a bit of indigestion. 

More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self–confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to one self.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life

As a woman I have no country.
As a woman I want no country.
As a woman my country is the whole world.

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

That complete statement which is literature.