Virginia Best Quotes & Sayings

Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand 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. Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world. — Virginia Woolf

All great writers have, of course, an atmosphere in which they seem most at their ease and at their best; a mood of the general mind which they interpret and indeed almost discover, so that we come to read them rather for that than for any story or character or scene of seperate excellence. — Virginia Woolf

What one wants in the person one lives with is that they should keep one at one's best. — Virginia Woolf

At this stage in the advancement of women the best policy for them is not to talk much about the abstract principles of women'srights but to do good work in any job they get, better work if possible than their male colleagues. — Virginia Gildersleeve

I'm fundamentally, I think, an outsider. I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It's an odd feeling though, writing aginst the current: difficult entirely to disregard the current. Yet of course I shall. — Virginia Woolf

Let the prison library not only meet the recognized needs of the men, but inspire them in further efforts. The reading habit once firmly fixed is among the best safeguards for any man. — Virginia Reeves

Black was bestlooking ... Ebony was the best wood, the hardest wood; it was black. Virginia ham was the best ham. It was black on the outside. Tuxedos and tail coats were black and they were a man's finest, most expensive clothes. You had to use pepper to make most meats and vegetables fit to eat. The most flavorsome pepper was black. The best caviar was black. The rarest jewels were black: black opals, black pearls. — Ann Petry

She didn't know their names, but friends she knew they were, friends without names, songs without words, always the best. — Virginia Woolf

Rising living standards - whether in a village, a region, a nation, or the world - depend first on specialization: on letting people concentrate on what they do best and trade with others who specialize in other things. — Virginia Postrel

It was no way to think about her best friend's boyfriend. But every time she saw Andy, her body reacted.
My gaydar is defective, she thought grimly. — Virginia Nelson

She'd wanted Randall Parks from the moment her hormones kicked in. Her best friend, her guardian when things got rough, her knight in somewhat-rusted and dinged up armor - he wore many hats in her life and none more important than that of best friend. — Virginia Nelson

In society it is etiquette for ladies to have the best chairs and get handed things. In the home the reverse is the case. This is why ladies are more sociable than gentlemen. — Virginia Graham

The warning is clear, but I back away anyway, breaking his hold on me. For a moment I think this is my real test: a test of strength and will and command and fear, every bit as real as the test in the tomb. A test not of Blackwell's design but one he contrived anyway: to make me choose between my best friend and my freedom, my family and my life. — Virginia Boecker

In times of war, it is often best to look to our history to see how past generations of Americans dealt with the loss of their countrymen in just causes. — Virginia Foxx

A woman's writing is always feminine; it cannot help being feminine; at its best it is most feminine; the only difficulty lies in defining what we mean by feminine. — Virginia Woolf

I didn't choose to be the Angel of Death, blast it!" He practically spat the words. When she blinked, taken aback by his vehemence, he added, "That was some fool's idea of a joke"
She kept staring at him, speechless. A joke? Her brother's death was a joke to someone?
Seeing her reaction, he went on in a low, tortured voice, "After Roger's accident, I wore black to mourn him. Since Roger wasn't my family, Chetwin commented on it, saying that I dressed in black because Death was my constant companion. He pointed out that everyone I touched died
my parents, my best friend ... everyone."
He began to pace the clearing, pain etched in his features. "Chetwin was right, of course. Death was my constant companion. So it was no great surprise when other people started calling me the Angel of Death." His voice grew choked. "I fit the part, after all."
-Gabriel to Virginia — Sabrina Jeffries

Think of something useless, and that's probably what I'll be doing. Listen, Virginia, we need to love the useless. We need to raise pigeons without a thought of eating them, plant rose bushes without expecting to pick roses, write without aiming at publication. We need to do things without expecting benefits in return. The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but it's in the curving paths that the best things are found ... We must love the useless, because there is beauty in uselessness. — Lygia Fagundes Telles

I agree with yours of the 22d that a professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution. but we cannot always do what is absolutely best. those with whom we act, entertaining different views, have the power and the right of carrying them into practice. truth advances, & error recedes step by step only; and to do to our fellow-men the most good in our power, we must lead where we can, follow where we cannot, and still go with them, watching always the favorable moment for helping them to another step.
[Comment on establishing Jefferson's University of Virginia, a secular college, in a letter to Thomas Cooper 7 October 1814] — Thomas Jefferson

The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think. — Virginia Woolf

We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods. — Virginia Woolf

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry. — Virginia Woolf

The best thing to do against life was to fold the paper so that it made a perfect
square, crisp, thick, impervious even to life. — Virginia Woolf

In 1985, I was living with my sister in Virginia, and since I was still in high school, I worked at McDonald's to save money to get an abortion. It sounds really terrible, but it was the best decision I ever made. It was the first time I took responsibility for my actions. I messed up, had sex without contraception, and got pregnant at 15. — Kathleen Hanna

It seems that a profound, impartial, and absolutely just opinion of our fellow-creatures is utterly unknown. Either we are men, or we are women. Either we are cold, or we are sentimental. Either we are young, or growing old. In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows. And why, if this
and much more than this is true
why are we yet surprised in the window corner by a sudden vision that the young man in the chair is of all things in the world the most real, the most solid, the best known to us
why indeed? For the moment after we know nothing about him.
Such is the manner of our seeing. Such the conditions of our love. — Virginia Woolf

Abundant choice doesn't force us to look for the absolute best of everything. It allows us to find the extremes in those things we really care about, whether that means great coffee, jeans cut wide across the hips, or a spouse who shares your zeal for mountaineering, Zen meditation, and science fiction. — Virginia Postrel

Such she often felt herself
struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: "But this is what I see; this is what I see," and so to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their best to pluck from her. — Virginia Woolf

I've done my best to see you as you are, without any of this damned romantic nonsense. That was why I asked you here, and it's increased my folly. When you're gone I shall look out of that window and think of you. I shall waste the whole evening thinking of you. I shall waste my whole life, I believe. — Virginia Woolf

I'm just a poor boy from the cornfields of Richmond, Virginia. I'm proud because I loved baseball and played with the best. — Ray Dandridge

And really it would profit little to write down what they said, for they knew each other so well that they could say anything they liked, which is tantamount to saying nothing, or saying such stupid, prosy things, as how to cook an omelette, or where to buy the best boots in London, which have no lustre taken from their setting, yet are positively of amazing beauty within it. For it has come about, by the wise economy of nature, that our modern spirit can almost dispense with language; the commonest expressions do, since no expressions do; hence, the most ordinary conversation is often the most poetic, and the most poetic is precisely that which cannot be written down. For which reasons we leave a great blank here, which must be taken to indicate that the space is filled to repletion. — Virginia Woolf

To leave a place, you'd best leave everything behind; all your possessions, including memory. Traveling's not as easy as it's made out to be. — Virginia Hamilton

Kind old ladies assure us that cats are often the best judges of character. A cat will always go to a good man, they say[.] — Virginia Woolf

All extremes are dangerous. It is best to keep in the middle of the road, in the common ruts, however muddy. — Virginia Woolf

You need to see that you can compete with the best and win. You've got the right stuff, Joan Sanderson! — Virginia Smith

Friendships, even the best of them, are frail things. One drifts apart. — Virginia Woolf

Whoever is president, my first priority is the same - as always. I look for what's best for West Virginia and the nation as a whole. — Joe Manchin

It won't seem to you nonsense in ten years' time,' said Mrs. Hilbery. 'Believe me, Katharine, you'll look back on this these days afterwards; you'll remember all the silly things you've said; and you'll find that your life has been built on them. The best of life is built on what we say when we're in love. It isn't nonsense Katherine,' she urged, 'it's the truth, it's the only truth. — Virginia Woolf

The best letters of our time are precisely those that can never be published. — Virginia Woolf

Dr. Ian Stevenson, Carlson Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia Medical School, has published five volumes of case histories, mostly of children under the age of four who have detailed memories of past lives. Some of them even describe the process of dying and being reincarnated. The vivid detail of the best cases, all verified by Dr. Stevenson and his assistants, suggests strongly that reincarnation is a real process - and therefore, by implication, that the soul is real. — Whitley Strieber

Prior to my arrival at the Crowne Plaza in Indianapolis, my agent and I decided that it would be best not to participate in any drills at the combine. We wanted to wait until my pro day at Virginia, where I could limit the distractions and just focus on being my best. — D'Brickashaw Ferguson

But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them. — Virginia Woolf

You cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water-it is adulterated, methylated, sanded poetry that makes the best lectures. — Virginia Woolf

There was danger at times that women might not be judged by the highest standards, but more leniently because of their sex. "She is a remarkably good chemist
for a woman," you might hear a man say. It seemed to me essential, if the ablest young women scholars were to achieve the best work of which they were capable, that they should be held to the most rigorous standards ... To advance, a woman must do at least as good work as her male colleagues, usually better. — Virginia Gildersleeve

In 1778, Jefferson presented to the Virginia legislature "A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge," in which he argued that all forms of government could degenerate into tyranny. The best way of preventing this, he wrote, is "to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large." The study of history could serve as an especially effective bulwark, allowing the people to learn how to defeat tyranny from past examples. Jefferson would return again and again to the importance of education in a democracy. — Fareed Zakaria

The two sexes are different to the core, and each is necessary - culturally and biologically - for the optimal development of a human being."12 In a summary of the relevant science, University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox finds much the same: Let me now conclude our review of the social scientific literature on sex and parenting by spelling out what should be obvious to all. The best psychological, sociological, and biological research to date now suggests that - on average - men and women bring different gifts to the parenting enterprise, that children benefit from having parents with distinct parenting styles, and that family breakdown poses a serious threat to children and to the societies in which they live.13 — Sherif Girgis

Religion, art, and science flourish best in a free society. True, freedom does not afford much opportunity for grand gestures. It has little room for martyrs. But life is not supposed to be about dying well. It is about living well. — Virginia Postrel

The Internet ethos of diversity and competition runs exactly counter to uniform, gatekeeper-oriented medical culture - the technocratic philosophy of the 'one best way' embodied in our pharmaceutical regulations. On the Net, medical information is abundant, and pharmacies, domestic and foreign, operate on many different models. — Virginia Postrel

Katherine, who tried so hard in London to be best friends with Virginia Woolf, who hated her, because Katherine was the kind of naif-imbecile that the literary men adored and championed at her expense. — Chris Kraus

Fish are unable, of course, to speak for themselves about how we treat them. They have ways of communicating with each other and, in some cases, even with other species of fish, as the groupers and eels do. As with most animals, their inability to communicate directly with us puts them at a disadvantage. They cannot argue for their rights or how they might best be treated or farmed or managed in the wild. Most animals have no voice that we can hear, unless we speak up for them. And even if an animal could talk, would we listen? — Virginia Morell

I detest the masculine point of view. I am bored by his heroism, virtue, and honour. I think the best these men can do is not talk about themselves anymore. — Virginia Woolf

If the best of one's feelings means nothing to the person most concerned in those feelings, what reality is left us? — Virginia Woolf

Our eyes and brains pretty consistently like some human forms better than others. Shown photos of strangers, even babies look longer at the faces adults rank the best-looking. — Virginia Postrel

She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts if family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the led; if there was a draft she sat in it
in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others ... I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self defense. Had I not killed her, she would have killed me. — Virginia Woolf

The next best thing to a winning day at the track is a losing day. — Virginia Clinton Kelley

And he wanted no more of those other Puritan specialties: schools and books. In Virginia, he said, I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both! — Edmund S. Morgan

I love going to black churches, and I love some of these black preachers. The best preacher I ever saw in my life was a 93-year-old in a black church in Hamilton, Virginia. What a preacher! — Robert Duvall

On January 18, 1915, six months into the First World War, as all Europe was convulsed by killing and dying, Virginia Woolf wrote in her journal, 'The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing the future can be, I think.' Dark, she seems to be saying, as in inscrutable, not as in terrible. We often mistake the one for the other. Or we transform the future's unknowability into something certain, the fulfillment of all our dread, the place beyond which there is no way forward. Be again and again, far stranger things happen than the end of the world. — Rebecca Solnit

Digital forms are best illuminated by cultural criticism, which uses the tools of art and literary theory to make sense of the Internet's glorious illusion: that the Internet is life. Because — Virginia Heffernan