Quote

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

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
Never
Break
Moan
Love
Faces
Sweetheart
Upon
Washing
Comes
Fence
Away
Rolling
Persons
Separate
Person
Cat
Might
Mets
Shriek

More quotes by Stevie Smith

Image
I am hungry to be interrupted For ever and ever amen O Person from Porlock come quickly And bring my thoughts to an end.
Stevie Smith
Image
I like to see cats in movement. A galloping cat is a fine sight. See it cross the road in a streak, cursed by the drivers of motor cars and buses, dodging the butcher's bicycle, coming safe to the kerb and bellying under its home gate.
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
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
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
The sea was angry that day my friend, like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli.
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
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
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
Image
As Nature is always careless and indifferent Who sees, who steps, means nothing and this is pretty.
Stevie Smith
Image
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
Image
But one wants the idea of Death, you know, as something large and unknowable, something that allows a person to stretch himself out. Especially one wants it if one is tired. Or perhaps what one wants is simply a release from sensation, from all consciousness for ever.
Stevie Smith
Image
The human creature is alone in his carapace. Poetry is a strong way out.
Stevie Smith
Image
I love Death because he breaks the human pattern and frees us from pleasures too prolonged as well as from the pains of this world. It is pleasant, too, to remember that Death lies in our hands he must come if we call him. ... I think if there were no death, life would be more than flesh and blood could bear.
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
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
Death's not a separation or alteration or parting it's just a one-handled door.
Stevie Smith
Image
Love is not love that wounded bleeds And bleeding sullies slow. Come death within my hands and I Unto my love will go.
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