One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people’s throats—and one always secretes too much jelly. – Virginia Woolf
I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we dont have complete emotions about the present, only about the past. – Virginia Woolf
If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure – the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully? – Virginia Woolf
Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say. – Virginia Woolf
All of us encounter, at least once in our life, some individual who utters words that make us think forever. There are men whose phrases are oracles; who can condense in one sentence the secrets of life; who blurt out an aphorism that forms a character, or illustrates an existence. – Benjamin Disraeli
Reframing an extract as a quotation constitutes a kind of coauthorship. With no change in wording, the cited passage becomes different. I imagine that the thrill of making an anthology includes the opportunity to become such a coauthor. – Gary Saul Morson, The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture, 2011