Wine upon the lips ...

On January 25th 1882, one hundred twenty-eight years ago today, Adeline Virginia Stephen, known to all as Virginia Woolf, was born. Here she is pictured with her mother Julia.

Some quotes:

— So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery.

— The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

— Language is wine upon the lips.

— Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.

— My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery — always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?

— That great Cathedral space which was childhood.

— 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.

I could go on but will instead heed her warning:

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats - and one always secretes too much jelly.

The top portrait is by Roger Fry, the other two are by her sister Vanessa Bell, pictured below with Virginia:

Stephen sisters Virginia, left, and Vanessa