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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

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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
Truth
Soothe
Flattery
Formed
Encourage
Encouragement
Aim
Already
Opinion
Assuring

More quotes by Edith Sitwell

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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 goldfish.
Edith Sitwell
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I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish.
Edith Sitwell
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A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.
Edith Sitwell
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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.
Edith Sitwell
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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 paradises.
Edith Sitwell
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Vulgarity is, in reality, nothing but a modern, chic, pert descendant of the goddess Dullness.
Edith Sitwell
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Picasso was a delightful, kindly, friendly, simple little man. When I met him he was extremely excited and overjoyed that his mother-in-law had just died, and he was looking forward to the funeral.
Edith Sitwell
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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
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I may say that I think greed about poetry is the only permissible greed - it is, indeed, unavoidable.
Edith Sitwell
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I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
Edith Sitwell
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By 'happiness' I do not mean worldly success or outside approval, though it would be priggish to deny that both these things are most agreeable. I mean the inner consciousness, the inner conviction that one is doing well the thing that one is best fitted to do by nature.
Edith Sitwell
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If certain critics and poetasters had their way, 'Ordinary Piety' and its child, Dullness, would be the masters of poetry.
Edith Sitwell
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If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?
Edith Sitwell
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As for the usefulness of poetry, its uses are many. It is the deification of reality.
Edith Sitwell
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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
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There is no truth. Only points of view.
Edith Sitwell
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The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
Edith Sitwell
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What an artist is for is to tell us what we see but do not know that we see.
Edith Sitwell
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My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
Edith Sitwell
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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