Today marks the 130th birthday of Virginia Woolf. We pulled together some of our favorite quotes that reflect her thoughtful brilliance.

"I am rooted, but I flow."

"For the eye has this strange property: it rests only on beauty."

"They can because they think they can."

"As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world."

"You cannot find peace by avoiding life."

"literature is common ground; let us trespass freely and fearlessly and find our own way for ourselves."

"If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people."

"I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you're everything that exists; the reality of everything."

"Arrange whatever pieces come your way."

"Blame it or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in 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."

"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."

"Whenever you see a board up with Trespassers will be prosecuted, trespass at once."

"To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy. Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now again some chime (it might be a motor horn) tinkling divinely on the grass stalks—all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now. Beauty was everywhere."

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." 

Inspired? Hit the library and revisit one of her classics.