Edith Sitwell Quotes

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.

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.

The winter, the animal sleep of the earth is over
And in the warmth of the affirming sun
All beings, beasts, men planets, waters, move
Freed from the imprisoning frost, acclaim their love
That is the light of the sun.

After the long and portentous eclipse of the patient sun
The sudden spring began

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

I'm afraid I'm being an awful nuisance.

Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.

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.

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.

I wouldn't dream of following a fashion... how could one be a different person every three months?

People are usually made Dames for virtues I do not possess.

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.

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.

Vulgarity is, in reality, nothing but a modern, chic, pert descendant of the goddess Dullness.

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