Edith Sitwell
Edith Sitwell
Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell DBEwas a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth7 September 1877
thinking greed poetry
I may say that I think greed about poetry is the only permissible greed - it is, indeed, unavoidable.
lying book giving
Isn't it curious how one has only to open a book of verse to realise immediately that it was written by a very fine poet, or else that it was written by someone who is not a poet at all. In the case of the former, the lines, the images, though they are inherent in each other, leap up and give one this shock of delight. In the case of the latter, they lie flat on the page, never having lived.
lovers poet mankind
The poet is the complete lover of mankind.
hands ideas feelings
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.
regret thinking special
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.
heart dark self
The last faint spark In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark, The wounds of the baited bear,-- The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat On his helpless flesh . . . the tears of the hunted hare.
heart men evil
But I saw the little-Ant men as they ran Carrying the world's weight of the world's filth And the filth in the heart of Man-- Compressed till those lusts and greeds had a greater heat than that of the Sun.
cat heaven legs
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.
mother heart men
The ghost of the heart of manred Cain And the more murderous brain Of Man, still redder Nero that conceived the death Of his mother Earth, and tore Her womb, to know the place where he was conceived.
alcohol littles drink
Another little drink wouldn't do us any harm.
dying good-health very-good
I'm dying, but otherwise I'm in very good health.
skins endure ugliness
... all ugliness passes, and beauty endures, excepting of the skin.
nature years taught
By the time I was eleven years old, I had been taught that nature, far from abhorring a Vacuum, positively adores it.
mad nurse mind
What the reporters are like! They are mad with excitement at the thought of my approaching demise. Kind Sister Farquhar, my nurse, spends much of her time in throwing them downstairs. But one got in the other day, and asked me if I mind the fact that I must die.