Edith Sitwell Quotes
-
Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.
-
Hot water is my native element. I was in it as a baby, and I have never seemed to get out of it ever since.
-
I am an unpopular electric eel in a pool of catfish.
-
I am resigned to the fact that people who don't know me loathe me. Perhaps it is because I am a woman writing poetry. It must be annoying to a man who wants to write to see this horrid old lady who can.
-
Still falls the rain - dark as the world of man, black as our loss - blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails upon the Cross.
-
The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
-
White as a winding sheet, Masks blowing down the street:Moscow, Paris London, Vienna - all are undone. The drums of death are mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling, Mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling, The world's floors are quaking, crumbling and breaking.
-
Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?
-
My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
-
Vulgarity is, in reality, nothing but a modern, chic, pert descendant of the goddess Dullness.
-
The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.
-
I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent.
-
A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.
-
The aim of flattery is to soothe and encourage us by assuring us of the truth of an opinion we have already formed about ourselves.
-
Poetry is the deification of reality.
-
Tall windows show Infinity; And, hard reality, The candles weep and pry and dance Like lives mocked at by Chance. The rooms are vast as Sleep within; When once I ventured in, Chill Silence, like a surging sea, Slowly enveloped me.
-
I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... but I am too busy thinking about myself.
-
I am one of those unhappy persons who inspire bores to the greatest flights of art.
-
There are people, also, who cannot believe that beauty and gaiety are a part of goodness. When we think of cruelty, we must try to remember the stupidity, the envy, the frustration from which it has arisen.
-
Our hearts seemed safe in our breasts and sang to theLight - The marrow in the boneWe dreamed was safe. . . the blood in the veins, thesap in the treeWere springs of Deity.
-
I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
-
I'm not the man to baulk at a low smell,I’m not the man to insist on asphodel.This sounds like a He-fellow, don’t you think?It sounds like that. I belch, I bawl, I drink.
-
Remember only this of our hopeless loveThat never till Time is doneWill the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one.
-
The trouble with most Englishwomen is that they will dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous incarnation they do not want to attract attention.