Quotes from Edith Sitwell

There is no truth. Only points of view.

The trouble with most Englishwomen is that they will dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous incarnation... they do not want to attract attention.

The living blind and seeing Dead together lie As if in love . . . There was no more hating then, And no more love; Gone is the heart of Man.

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

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.

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.

Poetry ennobles the heart and the eyes, and unveils the meaning of all things upon which the heart and the eyes dwell. It discovers the secret rays of the universe, and restores to us forgotten paradises.

The aim of flattery is to soothe and encourage us by assuring us of the truth of an opinion we have already formed about ourselves.

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

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 goldfish.

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.

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

The trouble about most Englishwomen is that they will dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous incarnation, or hope to be one in the next.

Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home. It is no season in which to wander the world as if one were the wind blowing aimlessly along the streets without a place to rest, without food, and without time meaning anything to one, just as time means nothing to the wind.

I am an unpopular electric eel in a pool of catfish.

It is part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees.

What an artist is for is to tell us what we see but do not know that we see.

... all ugliness passes, and beauty endures, excepting of the skin.

I'm afraid I'm being an awful nuisance.