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
alcohol littles drink
Another little drink wouldn't do us any harm.
happiness mean would-be
By 'happiness' I do not mean worldly success or outside approval, though it would be priggish to deny that both these things are most agreeable. I mean the inner consciousness, the inner conviction that one is doing well the thing that one is best fitted to do by nature.
dream reality light
Rhythm is one of the principal translators between dream and reality. Rhythm might be described as, to the world of sound, what light is to the world of sight. It shapes and gives new meaning. Rhythm was described by Schopenhauer as melody deprived of its pitch.
brother dust world
The poet is a brother speaking to a brother of "a moment of their other lives" a moment that had been buried beneath the dust of the busy world.
dying good-health very-good
I'm dying, but otherwise I'm in very good health.
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.
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.
law poetry age
In the Augustan age ... poetry was ... the sister of architecture; with the romantics, and their heightened vowel-sense, resulting in different melodic lines, she became the sister of music; in the present day, she appears like the sister of horticulture, each poem growing according to the law of its own nature ...
heart poetry great-poet
All great poetry is dipped in the dyes of the heart ...
mother simple men
Picasso was a delightful, kindly, friendly, simple little man. When I met him he was extremely excited and overjoyed that his mother-in-law had just died, and he was looking forward to the funeral.
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.
art men doe
"It is part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees."
life hymns glory
My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life.
thinking frustration envy
When we think of cruelty, we must try to remember the stupidity, the envy, the frustration from which it has arisen.