Quote

If a lady comes up to you and tells you that your dear mama is lying in a faint on the pavement round the corner, don't you believe her, don't have anything to do with her, do not go with her into the cab. It is the White Slave Traffic.

Stevie Smith

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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
Anything
Corners
Pavement
Believe
Tells
Faint
Slave
Mama
Dear
Traffic
Advice
Corner
Lying
Lady
White
Round
Comes
Rounds
Cab

More quotes by Stevie Smith

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Fourteen-year-old, why must you giggle and dote, Fourteen-year-old, why are you such a goat? I'm fourteen years old, that is the reason, I giggle and dote in season.
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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.
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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.
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Youth is an arithmetical statement of passing interest, each hour eats it up.
Stevie Smith
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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
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I love people, but I love the thought and memory of them just as much.
Stevie Smith
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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
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I may be smelly and I may be old, Rough in my pebbles, reedy in my pools, But where my fish float by I bless their swimming, And I like the people to bathe in me especially women.
Stevie Smith
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As Nature is always careless and indifferent Who sees, who steps, means nothing and this is pretty.
Stevie Smith
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See the cat at love, rolling with its sweetheart, up and over, with shriek and moan. But if a person comes by, they break away, sit separate upon a fence washing their faces - and might never have met at all.
Stevie Smith
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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
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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
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Why does my muse only speak when she is uhnhappy? She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy.
Stevie Smith
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The human creature is alone in his carapace. Poetry is a strong way out.
Stevie Smith
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There can be no good art that is international. Art to be vigorous and gesund must use the material at hand.
Stevie Smith
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This Englishwoman is so refined, She has no bosom and no behind.
Stevie Smith
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I only asked my friends to be friendly and polite, I found them indifferent and censorious The one I left to silence, the other to reproach: God send me over all such friends victorious.
Stevie Smith
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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
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This is the simplest of all thoughts, that Death must come when we call, although he is a god.
Stevie Smith
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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