Quotes from Edith Sitwell

Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.

Still falls the Rain - Dark as the world of man, black as our loss - Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails Upon the Cross

it is as unseeing to ask what is the use of poetry as it would be to ask what is the use of religion.

I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.

Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?

My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life.

the arts are life accelerated and concentrated.

Lily O'Grady,Silly and shady,Longing to beA lazy lady.

I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish.

It is hardly respectable to be good nowadays.

I have taken this step because I want the discipline, the fire and the authority of the Church. I am hopelessly unworthy of it, but I hope to become worthy.

[History is] that terrible mill in which sawdust rejoins sawdust.

Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.

Hot water is my native element. I was in it as a baby, and I have never seemed to get out of it ever since.

The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.

The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.

Vulgarity is, in reality, nothing but a modern, chic, pert descendant of the goddess Dullness.

I have never, in all my life, been so odious as to regard myself as 'superior' to any living being, human or animal. I just walked alone - as I have always walked alone.

Still falls the rain - dark as the world of man, black as our loss - blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails upon the Cross.

Poetry is the deification of reality.

I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty...But I am too busy thinking about myself.

By the time I was eleven years old, I had been taught that nature, far from abhorring a Vacuum, positively adores it.

Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.

A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.