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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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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
Certain
Children
Dullness
Way
Piety
Would
Critics
Masters
Ordinary
Poetry
Child
More quotes by Edith Sitwell
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
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
The reason why Matthew Arnold, to my feeling, fails entirely as a poet (though no doubt his ideas were good - at least, I am told they were) is that he had no sense of touch whatsoever. Nothing made any impression on his skin. He could feel neither the shape nor the texture of a poem with his hands.
Edith Sitwell
The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
Edith Sitwell
I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... but I am too busy thinking about myself.
Edith Sitwell
The trouble with most Englishwomen is that they will dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous incarnation... they do not want to attract attention.
Edith Sitwell
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
I'm afraid I'm being an awful nuisance.
Edith Sitwell
... all ugliness passes, and beauty endures, excepting of the skin.
Edith Sitwell
It is hardly respectable to be good nowadays.
Edith Sitwell
As for the usefulness of poetry, its uses are many. It is the deification of reality.
Edith Sitwell
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
It is part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees.
Edith Sitwell
Vulgarity is, in reality, nothing but a modern, chic, pert descendant of the goddess Dullness.
Edith Sitwell
it is as unseeing to ask what is the use of poetry as it would be to ask what is the use of religion.
Edith Sitwell
The light would show (if it could harden) Eternities of kitchen garden
Edith Sitwell
The poet is the complete lover of mankind.
Edith Sitwell
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
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
I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
Edith Sitwell
