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Once you begin to take yourself seriously as a leader or as a follower, as a modern or as a conservative, then you become a self-conscious, biting, and scratching little animal whose work is not of the slightest value or importance to anybody.

— Virginia Woolf The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942)

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More quotes by Virginia Woolf

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

A Room of One's Own (1929)

Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.

A Room of One's Own (1929)

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

The Moment and Other Essays (1948)

The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.

A Room of One's Own (1929)

As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.

Orlando: A Biography (1928)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Virginia Woolf (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.