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
time thinking modesty
I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... but I am too busy thinking about myself.
taste vices worst
Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.
truth believe media-control
The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
history sawdust mills
[History is] that terrible mill in which sawdust rejoins sawdust.
women next dresses
Most women dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous reincarnation, or hope to be one in the next.
garden light kitchen
The light would show (if it could harden) Eternities of kitchen garden
poetry use would-be
it is as unseeing to ask what is the use of poetry as it would be to ask what is the use of religion.
lovers poet mankind
The poet is the complete lover of mankind.
skins endure ugliness
... all ugliness passes, and beauty endures, excepting of the skin.
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.
sleep reality sea
Tall windows show Infinity; And, hard reality, The candles weep and pry and dance Like lives mocked at by Chance. The rooms are vast as Sleep within; When once I ventured in, Chill Silence, like a surging sea, Slowly enveloped me.
ethics be-good respectable
It is hardly respectable to be good nowadays.
being-yourself successful secret
Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound why try to look like a Pekinese?
paris white crumbling
White as a winding sheet, Masks blowing down the street: Moscow, Paris London, Vienna all are undone. The drums of death are mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling, Mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling, The world's floors are quaking, crumbling and breaking.