Edith Sitwell: Trending quotes

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Edith Sitwell: 100 quotes4 likes

“I'm not the man to baulk at a low smell,
I’m not the man to insist on asphodel.
This sounds like a He-fellow, don’t you think?
It sounds like that. I belch, I bawl, I drink.”

"One–Way Song", p. 118
Taken Care Of (1965)

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

Source: Taken Care Of (1965), Ch. 19

“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.”

Still Falls the Rain (1940)

“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.”

As quoted in Edith Sitwell: Fire of the Mind : an Anthology (1976) by Elizabeth Salter, p. 176

“Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.”

The Last Years of a Rebel (1967)

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

"Some notes on my poetry" Collected Poems (1957)

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

As quoted in Writers on Writing (1986) by Jon Winokur, p. 24

“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.”

Source: Taken Care Of (1965), Ch. 15

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

Preface
Taken Care Of (1965)

“Still falls the Rain —
Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man's wounded Side:
He bears in His Heart all wounds, — those of the light that died,
The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark…”

Still Falls the Rain (1940)

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

As quoted in The Reader's Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary Special Supplement (1966), p. 2047

“The flames of the heart consumed me, and the mind
Is but a foolish wind.”

Green Song & Other Poems (1944), Heart and Mind

“Small things I handled and caressed and loved.
I let the stars assume the whole of night.But the big answers clamoured to be moved Into my life. Their great audacity
Shouted to be acknowledged and believed.”

This is from the poem "Answers" by Elizabeth Jennings, which has wrongly been attributed to Sitwell at a few sites on the internet.
Misattributed

“Remember only this of our hopeless love
That never till Time is done
Will the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one.”

Green Song & Other Poems (1944), Heart and Mind

“Mother or Murderer, you have
given or taken life —
Now all is one!”

"Three Poems of the Atomic Bomb: Dirge for the New Sunrise"
The Canticle of the Rose (1949)

“I wouldn't dream of following a fashion… how could one be a different person every three months?”

Source: The Last Years of a Rebel (1967), p. 24

“The great gold planet that is the mourning heat of the Sun
Is greater than all gold, more powerful
Than the tawny body of a Lion that fire consumes
Like all that grows or leaps… so is the heart
More powerful than all dust.”

Green Song & Other Poems (1944), Heart and Mind

“As for the usefulness of poetry, its uses are many. It is the deification of reality. It should make our days holy to us. The poet should speak to all men, for a moment, of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.”

Lecture "Young Poets" (1957) published in Mightier Than the Sword: The P.E.N. Hermon Ould Memorial Lectures, 1953-1961 (1964), p. 56
Variants:
Poetry is the deification of reality.
As quoted in Life magazine (4 January 1963)
The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.
As quoted in The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women (1992) by Rosalie Maggio, p. 247

“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.”

As quoted in 20,000 Quips & Quotes (1995) by Evan Esa

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

Life magazine (4 January 1963) attributed variant: 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.