Quotes by Edith Sitwell

“I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty...But I am too busy thinking about myself.”

“Eccentricity is not, as some would 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 an...”

“I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent.”

“My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.”

“Answers I kept my answers small and kept them near;Big questions bruised my mind but still I letSmall answers be a bullwark to my fear.The huge abstractions I kept from the light;Small things I han...”

“All day long you sit and sew,Stitch life down for fear it grow,Stitch life down for fear we guessAt the hidden ugliness.Dusty voice that throbs with heat,Hoping with your steel-thin beatTo put stit...”

“Your soul: pure glucose edged with hintsOf tentative and half-soiled tints”

“The fusty showman fumbles, must Fit in a particle of dustThe universe, for fear it gainIts freedom from my cube of brain.Yet dust bears seeds that grow to graceBehind my crude-striped wooden faceAs...”

“Solo For Ear-Trumpet The carriage brushes through the brightLeaves (violent jets from life to light);Strong polished speed is plunging, heavesBetween the showers of bright hot leavesThe window-glas...”

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”

“Said the Sun to the Moon-'When you are but a lonely white crone,And I, a dead King in my golden armour somewhere in a dark wood,Remember only this of our hopeless loveThat never till Time is doneWi...”

“I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish.”

“I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.”

“The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.”

“Poetry is the deification of reality.”

“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.”

“Poetry ennobles the heart and the eyes and unveils the meaning of all things upon which the heart and the eyes dwell. It discovers the secret rays of the universe and restores to us forgotten par...”

“I am dying but otherwise I am quite well.”

“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?”

“A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed in keeping rabbits.”