Quote

Oh Lion in a peculiar guise, Sharp Roman road to Paradise, Come eat me up, I'll pay thy toll With all my flesh, and keep my soul.

Stevie Smith

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Stevie Smith
Age: 68 †
Born: 1902
Born: September 20
Died: 1971
Died: March 7
Illustrator
Novelist
Performing Artist
Poet
Writer
Hull
England
Florence Margaret Smith
Pay
Roman
Keep
Lion
Soul
Lions
Come
Sharp
Peculiar
Paradise
Toll
Flesh
Tolls
Road
Guise

More quotes by Stevie Smith

Image
The human creature is alone in his carapace. Poetry is a strong way out.
Stevie Smith
Image
Youth is an arithmetical statement of passing interest, each hour eats it up.
Stevie Smith
Image
I love people, but I love the thought and memory of them just as much.
Stevie Smith
Image
I don't think Auden liked my poetry very much, he's very Anglican.
Stevie Smith
Image
So I fancy my Muse says, when I wish to die, Oh no, Oh no, we are not yet friends enough, And Virtue also says: We are not yet friends enough.
Stevie Smith
Image
Cry pretty, pretty, pretty and you'll be able Very soon not even to cry pretty And so be delivered entirely from humanity This is prettiest of all, it is very pretty.
Stevie Smith
Image
My Muse sits forlorn She wishes she had not been born She sits in the cold No word she says is ever told.
Stevie Smith
Image
I'm sorry to say my dear wife is a dreamer, and as she dreams she gets paler and leaner. Then be off to your Dream, with his fly-away hat, I stay with the girls who are happy and fat.
Stevie Smith
Image
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.
Stevie Smith
Image
Into the dark night Resignedly I go, I am not so afraid of the dark night As the friends I do not know, I do not fear the night above As I fear the friends below.
Stevie Smith
Image
People who are always praising the past And especially the time of faith as best Ought to go and live in the Middle Ages And be burnt at the stake as witches and sages.
Stevie Smith
Image
This is the simplest of all thoughts, that Death must come when we call, although he is a god.
Stevie Smith
Image
Christianity in the suburb is cheerful. The church is a centre of social activity and those who go to church need never be lonely.
Stevie Smith
Image
It is the privilege of the rich To waste the time of the poor To water with tears in secret A tree that grows in secret That bears fruit in secret That ripened falls to the ground in secret And manures the parent tree Oh the wicked tree of hatred and the secret The sap rising and the tears falling.
Stevie Smith
Image
Life in the [London] suburb is richer at the lower levels. At these levels the people are not self-conscious at all, they are at liberty to be as eccentric as they please, they do not know that they are eccentric.
Stevie Smith
Image
As Nature is always careless and indifferent Who sees, who steps, means nothing and this is pretty.
Stevie Smith
Image
Why does my muse only speak when she is uhnhappy? She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy.
Stevie Smith
Image
O happy dogs of England, Bark well at errand boys, If you lived anywhere else, You would not be allowed to make such an infernal noise.
Stevie Smith
Image
My heart was full of softening showers, I used to swing like this for hours, I did not care for war or death, I was glad to draw my breath.
Stevie Smith
Image
Truth is far and flat, and fancy is fiery and truth is cold, and people feel the cold, and they may wrap themselves against it in fancies that are fiery, but they should not call them facts and, generally, poets do not they are shrewd, they feel the cold, too, but they know a hawk from a handsaw, a fact from a fancy, as none knows better.
Stevie Smith