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Leonard Woolf Quotes
1880–1969 England
Leonard Sidney Woolf (25 November 1880 – 14 August 1969) was a British political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant. He was married to author Virginia Woolf.
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9 quotes
Nothing matters, and everything matters.
Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to be or remain a civilized man.
Barbarians Within and Without (1939)
There is nothing to which men cling more tenaciously than to their class privileges and vested interests except perhaps to their illusions.
No people has ever despised and distrusted the intellect and intellectuals more than the British.
There is always some contempt in pity. One pities poor old Oedipus, but one doesn't pity Job.
The Wise Virgins (1914)
In the timbre of a woman's voice, when it is beautiful, there seem to be mysteriously harmonised all the desires and enchantments both of the spirit and the body.
The Wise Virgins (1914)
The more complicated the life of a community or the more "advanced" the civilization, the more complicated, incessant, and severe becomes the control of instincts which is demanded from the individual.
Barbarians Within and Without (1939)
Sympathy [often] makes up part of the feeling of contempt.… Most people are generous enough to feel some pity for the dog with some touch of the cur and mongrel in it, which finds itself in the pure-bred and often snobbish society of a dog-show.
The Wise Virgins (1914)
Novels by serious writers of genius often eventually become best-sellers, but most contemporary best-sellers are written by second-class writers whose psychological brew contains a touch of naïvety, a touch of sentimentality, the story-telling gift, and a mysterious sympathy with the day-dreams of ordinary people.
Downhill All the Way (1967)
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