"And I will now rock the brown basin from side to side so that my ships may ride the waves. Some will founder. Some will dash themselves against the cliffs. One sails alone. That is my ship. It sails into icy caverns where the sea-bear barks and stalactites swing green chairs. The waves rise, their crests curl; look at the lights on the mastheads. They have scattered, they have foundered, all except my ship which mounts the wave and sweeps before the gale and reaches the islands where the parrots chatter and then the creepers."

9 likes

Source: Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1307, Delphi Classics

About the author

Virginia Woolf

Novelist

Virginia Woolf was a British author known for her modernist literature and pioneering feminist ideas, particularly in 'Mrs. Dalloway' and 'A Room of One's Own'.

All quotes by Virginia Woolf →

Same author

More quotes by Virginia Woolf

See all →
Virginia Woolf Novelist

"She dares me to pour myself out like a living waterfall. She dares me to enter the soul that is more than my own; she extinguishes fear in mere seconds. She lets light come through."

Read quote
Virginia Woolf Novelist

"Waves of hands, hesitations at street corners, someone dropping a cigarette into the gutter-all are stories. But which is the true story? That I do not know. Hence I keep my phrases hung like clothes in a cupboard, waiting for some one to wear them. Thus waiting, thus speculating, making this note and then an· other I do not cling to life. I shall be brushed like a bee from a sunflower. My philosophy, always accumulating, welling up moment by moment, runs like quicksilver a dozen ways at once."

Read quote