Edith Sitwell: Trending quotes (page 2)

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“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

“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

“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)

“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

“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.