Quote

I may say that I think greed about poetry is the only permissible greed - it is, indeed, unavoidable.

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
Permissible
Unavoidable
Greed
Indeed
Poetry
May
Think
Thinking

More quotes by Edith Sitwell

Image
I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
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
I wouldn't dream of following a fashion... how could one be a different person every three months?
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
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
Image
A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.
Edith Sitwell
Image
Virginia Woolf's writing is no more than glamorous knitting. I believe she must have a pattern somewhere.
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
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
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
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
The poet is the complete lover of mankind.
Edith Sitwell
Image
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
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
If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?
Edith Sitwell
Image
I'm dying, but otherwise I'm in very good health.
Edith Sitwell
Image
The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
Edith Sitwell
Image
What an artist is for is to tell us what we see but do not know that we see.
Edith Sitwell
Image
Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.
Edith Sitwell
Image
[History is] that terrible mill in which sawdust rejoins sawdust.
Edith Sitwell