Quotes by Edith Sitwell

About Edith Sitwell:

Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell was a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I am one of those unhappy persons who inspire bores to the greatest flights of art.

Edith Sitwell

I have taken this step because I want the discipline, the fire and the authority of the Church. I am hopelessly unworthy of it, but I hope to become worthy.

Edith Sitwell

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

Edith Sitwell

Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.

Edith Sitwell

The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.

Edith Sitwell

I am an unpopular electric eel in a pool of catfish.

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

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

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

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.

Edith Sitwell

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 and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluence...

Edith Sitwell

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.

Edith Sitwell

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

Edith Sitwell

Answers I kept my answers small and kept them near; Big questions bruised my mind but still I let Small answers be a bullwark to my fear. The huge abstractions I kept from the light; Small things I handled and caressed and loved. I let the stars assu...

Edith Sitwell

All day long you sit and sew, Stitch life down for fear it grow, Stitch life down for fear we guess At the hidden ugliness. Dusty voice that throbs with heat, Hoping with your steel-thin beat To put stitches in my mind, Make it tidy, make it kind, Yo...

Edith Sitwell

The fusty showman fumbles, must Fit in a particle of dust The universe, for fear it gain Its freedom from my cube of brain. Yet dust bears seeds that grow to grace Behind my crude-striped wooden face As I, a puppet tinsel-pink Leap on my springs, lea...

Edith Sitwell

Your soul: pure glucose edged with hints Of tentative and half-soiled tints

Edith Sitwell

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 love That never till Time is done Will the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind...

Edith Sitwell

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

Edith Sitwell

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

Edith Sitwell

Author Bio

  • NameEdith Sitwell
  • DescriptionBritish poet
  • AliasesDame Edith Louisa Sitwell; Edith Louisa Sitwell
  • BornSeptember 7, 1887
  • DiedDecember 9, 1964
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionPoet; Essayist; Literary Critic
  • AwardsDame Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire