Skip to content
Shawords

Quote#Courage

Life for both sexes — and I looked at them, shouldering their way…

Quote byVirginia Woolf · 1882–1941

Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 2, p. 35.

English (original)

Life for both sexes — and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement — is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle.

— Virginia Woolf

More from Virginia Woolf