# Quote — Virginia Woolf, Orlando

> While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace.

- Author: [Virginia Woolf](https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf.md)
- Book: [Orlando](https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf/orlando.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf#Orlando:_A_Biography_(1928)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf/orlando/while-fame-impedes

## More from this book

> Something, perhaps, we must believe in, and as Orlando, we have said, had no belief in the usual divinities she bestowed her credulity upon great men — yet with a distinction. Admirals, soldiers, statesmen, moved her not at all. But the very thought of a great writer stirred her to such a pitch of belief that she almost believed him to be invisible. Her instinct was a sound one. One can only believe entirely, perhaps, in what one cannot see.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf/orlando/something-perhaps-we-must.md)

> Old Madame du Deffand and her friends talked for fifty years without stopping. And of it all, what remains? Perhaps three witty sayings.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf/orlando/old-madame-du-deffand.md)

> Green in nature is one thing, green in in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/virginia-woolf/orlando/green-in-nature.md)