Quote

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

Edith Sitwell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Edith Sitwell
Age: 77 †
Born: 1887
Born: September 7
Died: 1964
Died: December 9
Biographer
Essayist
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Scarborough
North Yorkshire
Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell
Edith Louisa Sitwell
Dame Edith Sitwell
Miss Edith
Many
Great
Writing
Rabbits
Would
Sarcastic
People
Employed
Keeping
Reading
Better

More quotes by Edith Sitwell

Image
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
Image
In the Augustan age ... poetry was ... the sister of architecture with the romantics, and their heightened vowel-sense, resulting in different melodic lines, she became the sister of music in the present day, she appears like the sister of horticulture, each poem growing according to the law of its own nature.
Edith Sitwell
Image
It is hardly respectable to be good nowadays.
Edith Sitwell
Image
[History is] that terrible mill in which sawdust rejoins sawdust.
Edith Sitwell
Image
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.
Edith Sitwell
Image
The last faint spark In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark, The wounds of the baited bear,-- The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat On his helpless flesh . . . the tears of the hunted hare.
Edith Sitwell
Image
I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
Edith Sitwell
Image
It is part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees.
Edith Sitwell
Image
If certain critics and poetasters had their way, 'Ordinary Piety' and its child, Dullness, would be the masters of poetry.
Edith Sitwell
Image
Virginia Woolf's writing is no more than glamorous knitting. I believe she must have a pattern somewhere.
Edith Sitwell
Image
What is the special privilege of youth? It is, I think, the power of looking forward, the firm belief that the future holds something that is worth possessing, and that, therefore, one can let the present moment drop from one without regret and without fear.
Edith Sitwell
Image
The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
Edith Sitwell
Image
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
Image
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.
Edith Sitwell
Image
I'm afraid I'm being an awful nuisance.
Edith Sitwell
Image
I am one of those unhappy persons who inspire bores to the greatest flights of art.
Edith Sitwell
Image
The light would show (if it could harden) Eternities of kitchen garden
Edith Sitwell
Image
My temper is not spoilt. I am absolutely non-homicidal. Nor do I ever attack unless I have been attacked first, and then Heaven have mercy upon the attacker, because I don't! I just sharpen my wits on a wooden head as a cat sharpens its claws on the wood legs of a table.
Edith Sitwell
Image
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
Image
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