Virginia Woolf Quotes

Virginia Woolf Quotes Writer Virginia Woolf is a key figure in the modernist literary movement. She is best known for her writings between World War I and World War II including the 1929 essay, A Room of Ones Own, and novels Mrs. Dalloway and Orlando. Interest in Virginia Woolf and her writings revived with the feminist criticism of the 1970s. Selected Virginia Woolf Quotations On Women A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, I want no country. As a woman, my country is the world. I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. The history of mens opposition to womens emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself. 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? The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity. This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room. Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman manly, or a man womanly. On Women in Literature [W]omen have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time. If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as a man, some think even better. Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe? On History Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded. For most of history, Anonymous was a woman. On Life and Living To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is...at last, to love it for what it is, and then to put it away. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. When you consider things like the stars, our affairs dont seem to matter very much, do they? The beauty of the world, which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title. Its not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; its the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses. Life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning. Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. On Freedom To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves. Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind. On Time 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. The mind of man works with strangeness upon the body of time. An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be accurately represented by the timepiece of the mind by one second. On Age The older one grows, the more one likes indecency. One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them. These are the souls changes. I dont believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering ones aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism. On War and Peace 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. If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or our country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not share. On Education and Intelligence The first duty of a lecturer is to hand you after an hours discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece forever. If we help an educated mans daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? - not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers? There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea. On Writing Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others. Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money. It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything. Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice. A biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many as a thousand. Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order. When the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning, it satisfies the senses amazingly. A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that its there complete in the mind, if only at the back. I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual. I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again - as I always am when I write. Humour is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue. Language is wine upon the lips. On Reading When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading. On Work Occupation is essential. On Integrity and Truth If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people. This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say. It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. On Public Opinion On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points. It is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed any longer. On Society Inevitably we look upon society, so kind to you, so harsh to us, as an ill-fitting form that distorts the truth; deforms the mind; fetters the will. Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. Those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, euphemistically, as the stately homes of England. On People Really I dont like human nature unless all candied over with art. On Friendship Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends. On Money Money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for. On Clothes There is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us, and not we, them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking. On Religion I read the book of Job last night, I dont think God comes out well in it. About These Quotes This quote collection was assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis. Each quotation page in this collection and the entire collection  © Jone Johnson Lewis. This is an informal collection assembled over many years.

Biography of Cary Grant, Famous Leading Man

Biography of Cary Grant, Famous Leading Man Cary Grant (born Archibald Alexander Leach; January 18, 1904–November 29, 1986) was one of Americans most successful actors of the 20th century. He made his way out of an unhappy home life in Bristol, England, by joining a troupe of British comedians, then crossing the Atlantic to try his hand at vaudeville before becoming a suave screen presence and one of Hollywood’s favorite leading men. Fast Facts: Cary Grant Known For: One of filmdoms favorite leading menAlso Known As: Archibald Alexander LeachBorn: January 18, 1904 in Bristol, EnglandParents: Elias James Leach, Elsie Maria KingdonDied: November 29, 1986 in Davenport, IowaFilms: Topper, To Catch a Thief, North by Northwest, CharadeSpouse(s): Virginia Cherrill, Barbara Woolworth Hutton, Betsy Drake, Dyan Cannon, Barbara HarrisChildren: Jennifer GrantNotable Quote: So would I, when told by an interviewer that Everybody would like to be  Cary Grant. Early Life Grant was the son of Elsie Maria Kingdon and Elias James Leach, a suit presser in a clothing manufacturing plant. The working-class family of Episcopalians lived in a stone row house in Bristol, England, kept warm by coal-burning fireplaces. When Grant was young, his parents often argued with one another. A bright boy, Grant attended the Bishop Road Boys’ School, ran errands for his mother, and enjoyed movies with his father. When Grant was 9, however, his life tragically changed when his mother disappeared. Told that she was resting at a seaside resort, Grant wouldn’t see her for more than 20 years. Now raised by his father and his father’s distant parents, Grant took his mind off his unsettled home life by playing handball at school and joining the Boy Scouts. In school, he loitered in the science lab, fascinated by electricity. The science professor’s assistant took the 13-year-old Grant to the Bristol Hippodrome to show him the lighting system he had installed. Grant became infatuated- not with the lighting, but with the theater. English Theater In 1918, the 14-year-old Grant took a job at the Empire Theater assisting the men working the arc lamps. He frequently skipped school to attend matinees. Hearing that the Bob Pender Troupe of comedians was hiring, Grant wrote Pender an introductory letter, forging his father’s signature. Unbeknownst to his father, Grant was hired and learned to walk on stilts, pantomime, and perform acrobatics, touring English cities with the troupe. Grants devotion was thwarted when his father found him and dragged him home. Grant got himself expelled from school by peeking at the girls in the restroom.  With his father’s blessing, Grant then rejoined the Pender troupe. In 1920, eight boys, Grant among them, were selected from the troupe to appear at New Yorks Hippodrome. The teen sailed for America to begin a new life. Broadway While working in New York in 1921, Grant received a letter from his father saying he had fathered a son named Eric Leslie Leach with another woman. Grant gave little thought to his half-brother, enjoying baseball, Broadway celebrities, and living beyond his means. When the Pender tour ended in 1922, Grant stayed in New York, selling ties on the street and performing on stilts at Coney Island while watching for another vaudeville opening. Soon he was back at the Hippodrome using his acrobatic, juggling, and mime skills. In 1927, Grant appeared in his first Broadway musical comedy, Golden Dawn, at the Hammerstein Theater. Because of his good looks and gentlemanly ways, Grant won the leading male role in a 1928 play, Rosalie. He was spotted by Fox Film Corp. talent scouts and asked to take a screen test, which he flunked: They said he was bowlegged and his neck was too thick. When the stock market crashed in 1929, half of the Broadway theaters closed. Grant took a pay cut but appeared in musical comedies. In the summer of 1931, Grant, hungry for work, appeared at the outdoor Muny Opera in St. Louis, Missouri. Movies In November 1931, the 27-year-old Grant drove cross-country to Hollywood. After a few introductions and dinners, he had another screen test and received a five-year contract with Paramount, but the studio rejected his name. Grant had played a character named Cary on Broadway; the plays author suggested that Grant take that name. He picked Grant from a studio list of last names. Grant’s first feature film, This Is the Night (1932), was followed by seven more films that year. He took parts rejected by seasoned actors. Although Grant was inexperienced, his looks and easy working style kept him in pictures, including the popular Mae West films She Done Him Wrong (1933) and I’m No Angel (1933). Marrying and Going Independent In 1933, Grant met actress Virginia Cherrill, 26, the star of several Charlie Chaplin films, at the William Randolph Hearst beach house and sailed for England that November, his first trip home. They married on February 2, 1934, in London’s Caxton Hall registry office. After seven months, Cherrill left Grant and claimed he was too controlling. They divorced in 1935. In 1936, rather than re-signing with Paramount, Grant hired an independent agent to represent him. Grant could now choose his roles and took taking artistic control of his career, which gave him unprecedented independence at the time. Between 1937 and 1940, Grant honed his screen personality as an elegant, irresistible leading man. He appeared in two moderately successful films, Columbias When Youre in Love (1937) and RKO’s The Toast of New York (1937). Then came box-office success in Topper (1937) and The Awful Truth (1937), which received six Academy Awards- Grant, the leading actor, was not the recipient of any of those awards. Grants Mother Resurfaces In October 1937, Grant received a letter from his mother, saying she wanted to see him. Grant, who thought she had died years before, booked passage to England after he finished filming Gunga Din (1939). At 33, Grant finally learned that his mother had suffered a nervous breakdown and his father put her into an asylum. She had become mentally unbalanced from guilt over losing an earlier son, John William Elias Leach, who had developed gangrene from a torn thumbnail before he turned 1. After watching him around the clock for several nights, Elsie took a nap and the child died. Grant got his mother released and purchased a Bristol home for her. He corresponded with her, visited often, and financially supported her until she died at age 95 in 1973. Marrying Again In 1940, Grant appeared in Penny Serenade (1941) and received an Oscar nomination. He didnt win, but he became a box-office star and, on June 26, 1942, an American citizen. On July 8, 1942, Grant married 30-year-old Barbara Woolworth Hutton, the granddaughter of the founder of Woolworths and one of the worlds wealthiest women. Later, Grant received his second Oscar nomination for Best Actor for None but the Lonely Heart (1944). After several separations and reconciliations, the marriage ended in divorce on July 11, 1945. Hutton had lifelong psychological problems; she was 6 when she found her mother’s body after her suicide. In 1947, Grant received the Kings Medal for Services in the Cause of Freedom for meritorious service during World War II, when he had donated his salaries from two movies to the British war effort. On December 25, 1949, Grant got married for the third time, to 26-year-old Betsy Drake- his co-star in Every Girl Should Be Married (1948). Brief Retirement Grant retired from acting in 1952, sensing that newer, grittier actors such as James Dean and Marlon Brando were the new draw rather than light-hearted comedic actors. Drake introduced Grant to LSD therapy, which was legal at that time. Grant claimed he found inner peace regarding his troubled upbringing. Director Alfred Hitchcock coaxed Grant out of retirement to star in To Catch a Thief (1955). Its acclaim followed two earlier Grant-Hitchcock successes: Suspicion (1941) and Notorious (1946). Grant starred in more films, including Houseboat (1958), where he fell in love with co-star Sophia Loren. Although Loren married producer Carlo Ponti, Grant’s marriage to Drake became strained; they separated in 1958 but didnt divorce until August 1962. Grant starred in another Hitchcock film, North by Northwest (1959). His suave performance made him the archetype for Ian Fleming’s fictional spy James Bond. Grant was offered the role by producer Albert Broccoli, but Grant thought he was too old and would commit to just one film of the potential series. The role ultimately went to 32-year-old Sean Connery in 1962. Grant’s successful movies continued with Charade (1963) and Father Goose (1964). Becoming a Father On July 22, 1965, the 61-year-old Grant married his fourth wife, 28-year-old actress Dyan Cannon. In 1966, Cannon gave birth to daughter Jennifer, Grants first child. Grant announced his retirement from acting that year. Cannon reluctantly joined Grant’s LSD therapy, but her scary experiences strained their relationship. They divorced on March 20, 1968, but Grant remained a doting father. On a trip to England, Grant met hotel public relations officer Barbara Harris, 46 years his junior, and married her on April 15, 1981. They remained married until his death five years later. Death In 1982, Grant began touring the international lecture circuit in a one-man show called A Conversation with Cary Grant, during which he talked about his films, showed clips, and answered audience questions. Grant was in Davenport, Iowa, when he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while preparing for the show. He died that night, Nov. 29, 1986, at age 82. Legacy In 1970, Grant received a special Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his acting achievements. Coupled with his two previous best actor Oscar nominations, five Golden Globe best actor nominations, 1981 Kennedy Center honors, and nearly two dozen other major nominations and awards, Grants place in film history is secure, as is his image of grace and civility. In 2004, Premiere magazine named him the greatest movie star of all time. Sources â€Å"Cary Grant.† IMDb.Cary Grant Biography. Biography.com.Cary Grant: British-American Actor. Encyclopaedia Britannica.10 Things You Never Knew About Cary Grant, Hollywood’s Greatest Leading Man. Littlethings.com.