Quote

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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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
Past
Stakes
Best
Ages
Praising
Live
Praise
Sages
Always
Especially
Witches
Time
Ought
Burnt
People
Middle
Stake
Age
Sage
Faith
Witch

More quotes by 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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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.
Stevie Smith
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Nothing is more wistful than the scent of lilac, nor more robust than its woody stalk, for we must remember that it is a tree as well as a flower, we must try not to forget this.
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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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
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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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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
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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
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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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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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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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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
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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
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Death's not a separation or alteration or parting it's just a one-handled door.
Stevie Smith
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I don't think Auden liked my poetry very much, he's very Anglican.
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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The sea was angry that day my friend, like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli.
Stevie Smith
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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
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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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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