Edith Sitwell Quotes

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 be one.

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.

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

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

The poet is a brother speaking to a brother of "a moment of their other lives" — a moment that had been buried beneath the dust of the busy world.

And your arms and your breasts are my Rivers of Life

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.

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.

The flames of the heart consumed me, and the mind
Is but a foolish wind.

Our hearts seemed safe in our breasts and sang to the
Light — The marrow in the bone
We dreamed was safe. . . the blood in the veins, the
sap in the tree
Were springs of Deity.

As for the usefulness of poetry, its uses are many. It is the deification of reality. It should make our days holy to us. The poet should speak to all men, for a moment, of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.

Mother or Murderer, you have
given or taken life — Now all is one!

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

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, learn how to think — Till like the trembling golden stalk
Of some long-petalled star, I walk

Through the dark heavens, and the dew
Falls on my eyes and sense thrills through.

My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life.