Quote

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

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
Unseeing
Poetry
Asks
Religion
Use
Would

More quotes by 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
Our hearts seemed safe in our breasts and sang to the Light The marrow in the bone We dreamed was safe. . . the blood in the veins, the sap in the tree Were springs of Deity.
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
Virginia Woolf, I enjoyed talking to her, but thought nothing of her writing. I considered her 'a beautiful little knitter.
Edith Sitwell
Image
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
Image
My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
Edith Sitwell
Image
I may say that I think greed about poetry is the only permissible greed - it is, indeed, unavoidable.
Edith Sitwell
Image
I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... but I am too busy thinking about myself.
Edith Sitwell
Image
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
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
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
There is no truth. Only points of view.
Edith Sitwell
Image
I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish.
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
It is part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees.
Edith Sitwell
Image
A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.
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'm dying, but otherwise I'm in very good health.
Edith Sitwell
Image
All great poetry is dipped in the dyes of the heart.
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