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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.
Edith Sitwell -
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.
Edith Sitwell
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I am an unpopular electric eel in a pool of catfish.
Edith Sitwell -
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.
Edith Sitwell -
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.
Edith Sitwell -
The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
Edith Sitwell -
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.
Edith Sitwell -
My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
Edith Sitwell
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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?
Edith Sitwell -
Vulgarity is, in reality, nothing but a modern, chic, pert descendant of the goddess Dullness.
Edith Sitwell -
The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.
Edith Sitwell -
I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent.
Edith Sitwell -
A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.
Edith Sitwell -
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.
Edith Sitwell
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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.
Edith Sitwell -
I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... but I am too busy thinking about myself.
Edith Sitwell -
Poetry is the deification of reality.
Edith Sitwell -
I am one of those unhappy persons who inspire bores to the greatest flights of art.
Edith Sitwell -
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.
Edith Sitwell -
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.
Edith Sitwell
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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.
Edith Sitwell -
I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
Edith Sitwell -
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.
Edith Sitwell -
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.
Edith Sitwell