Vita Sackville-West Quotes

Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson, CH , usually known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English poet, novelist, and garden designer.

She was a successful novelist, poet, and journalist, as well as a prolific letter writer and diarist. She published more than a dozen collections of poetry during her lifetime and 13 novels. She was twice awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Imaginative Literature: in 1927 for her pastoral epic, The Land, and in 1933 for her Collected Poems. She was the inspiration for the androgynous protagonist of Orlando: A Biography, by her famous friend and lover, Virginia Woolf.

She had a longstanding column in The Observer and is remembered for the celebrated garden at Sissinghurst created with her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson.



Wikipedia  

✵ 9. March 1892 – 2. June 1962
Vita Sackville-West photo
Vita Sackville-West: 39   quotes 7   likes

Famous Vita Sackville-West Quotes

“Here the old Bacchic piety endures,
Here the sweet legends of the world remain.”

"Tuscany" in The Best Poems of 1923 (1924) edited by Thomas Moult
Context: The dusk is heavy with the wine's warm load;
Here the long sense of classic measure cures
The spirit weary of its difficult pain;
Here the old Bacchic piety endures,
Here the sweet legends of the world remain.

“She walks among the loveliness she made,
Between the apple-blossom and the water—
She walks among the patterned pied brocade,
Each flower her son, and every tree her daughter.”

"The Island", in Bulletin of the Garden Club of America (1929), p. 1, also in Collected Poems (1934), p. 54

“There was nothing, nothing there,
Nothing there to see.”

"Leopards at Knole", p. 143
Collected Poems (1933)
Context: Often on the painted stair,
As I passed abstractedly,
Velvet footsteps, two and three,
Padded gravely after me.
— There was nothing, nothing there,
Nothing there to see.

“I saw within the wheelwright’s shed
The big round cartwheels, blue and red”

"Making Cider", p. 100
The Land (1926)
Context: I saw within the wheelwright’s shed
The big round cartwheels, blue and red;
A plough with blunted share;
A blue tin jug; a broken chair;
And paint in trial patchwork square
Slapping up against the wall;
The lumber of the wheelwright’s trade,
And tools on benches neatly laid,
The brace, the adze, the awl;

“You're safe; that's gone, that wild caprice,
But tell me once before I cease,
Which does your Church esteem the kinder role,
To kill the body or destroy the soul?”

"And so it ends" quoted in V. Sackville-West : A Critical Biography (1974) by Michael Stevens, p. 91
Context: Darling, I thought of nothing mean;
I thought of killing straight and clean.
You're safe; that's gone, that wild caprice,
But tell me once before I cease,
Which does your Church esteem the kinder role,
To kill the body or destroy the soul?

Vita Sackville-West Quotes about love

“Why should a poet pray thus? poets scorn
The boundaried love of country, being free
Of winds, and alien lands, and distances,
Vagabonds of the compass, wayfarers,
Pilgrims of thought, the tongues of Pentecost
Their privilege”

Winter, p. 4
The Land (1926)
Context: Why should a poet pray thus? poets scorn
The boundaried love of country, being free
Of winds, and alien lands, and distances,
Vagabonds of the compass, wayfarers,
Pilgrims of thought, the tongues of Pentecost
Their privilege, and in the peddler's pack
The curious treasures of their stock-in-trade,
Bossy and singular, the heritage
Of poetry and science, polished bright,
Thin with the rubbing of too many hands;
Myth, glamour, hazard, fables dim as age,
Faith, doubt, perplexity, grief, hope, despair,
Wings, and great waters, and Promethean fire,
Man's hand to clasp, and Helen's mouth to kiss.
Why then in little meadows hedge about
A poet's pasture? shed a poet's cloak
For fustian? cede a birthright, thus to map
So small a corner of so great a world?

“You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don't love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don't really resent it.”

Letter to Virginia Woolf (21 January 1926), quoted in Love Letters : A Romantic Treasury (1996) by Rick Smith, p. 78
Context: It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this — But oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don't love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don't really resent it.

“It is quite true that you have had infinitely more influence on me intellectually than anyone, and for this alone I love you.”

Letter to Virginia Woolf (29 January 1927). as quoted in Granite and Rainbow : The Hidden Life of Virginia Woolf (2000) by Mitchell Leaska, p. 259

Vita Sackville-West Quotes about life

“And what have I to give my friends in the last resort?
An awkwardness, a shyness, and a scrap,
No thing that's truly me, a bootless waste,
A waste of myself and them, for my life is mine
And theirs presumably theirs, and cannot touch.”

"Days I enjoy" quoted in Vita and Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf (1993) by Suzanne Raitt, p. 89

“The country habit has me by the heart,
For he's bewitched for ever who has seen,
Not with his eyes but with his vision, Spring
Flow down the woods and stipple leaves with sun,
As each man knows the life that fits him best,
The shape it makes in his soul, the tune, the tone”

"Winter", p. 5
The Land (1926)
Context: The country habit has me by the heart,
For he's bewitched for ever who has seen,
Not with his eyes but with his vision, Spring
Flow down the woods and stipple leaves with sun,
As each man knows the life that fits him best,
The shape it makes in his soul, the tune, the tone,
And after ranging on a tentative flight
Stoops like the merlin to the constant lure.

“It was a real event in my life and my heart to be with you the other day. We do matter to each other, don't we? however much our ways may have diverged.”

Letter to http://www.sappho.com/letters/vitas-w.html Violet Trefusis (3 September 1950), published in The Other Woman : A Life of Violet Trefusis, including previously unpublished correspondence with Vita Sackville-West (1985) edited by Philippe Jullian and John Nova Phillips, p. 235
Context: It was a real event in my life and my heart to be with you the other day. We do matter to each other, don't we? however much our ways may have diverged. I think we have got something indestructible between us, haven't we? … It has been a very strange relationship, ours; unhappy at times, happy at others; but unique in its way, and infinitely precious to me and (may I say?) to you.
What I like about it is that we always come together again however long the gaps in our meetings may have been. Time seems to make no difference.

“Of course I have no right whatsoever to write down the truth about my life involving as it naturally does the lives of so many other people, but I do so urged by a necessity of truth-telling, because there is no living soul who knows the complete truth”

Autobiographical sketch (23 July 1920), published in Portrait of a Marriage : Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson (1998), p. 3
Context: Of course I have no right whatsoever to write down the truth about my life involving as it naturally does the lives of so many other people, but I do so urged by a necessity of truth-telling, because there is no living soul who knows the complete truth; here, may be one who knows a section; and there, one who knows another section: but to the whole picture not one is initiated.

Vita Sackville-West Quotes

“Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming.”

Twelve Days (1928) p. 9; part of this appears to have also become paraphrased in the form:
Context: It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? for the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind; how the observation of last year seems childish, superficial; how this year — even this week — even with this new phrase — it seems to us that we have grown to a new maturity. It may be a fallacious persuasion, but at least it is stimulating, and so long as it persists, one does not stagnate.
I look back as through a telescope, and see, in the little bright circle of the glass, moving flocks and ruined cities.

“Days I enjoy are days when nothing happens,
When I have no engagements written on my block,
When no one comes to disturb my inward peace”

"Days I enjoy", quoted in Vita and Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf (1993) by Suzanne Raitt, p. 89
Context: Days I enjoy are days when nothing happens,
When I have no engagements written on my block,
When no one comes to disturb my inward peace,
When no one comes to take me away from myself
And turn me into a patchwork, a jig-saw puzzle,
A broken mirror that once gave a whole reflection,
Being so contrived that it takes too long a time
To get myself back to myself when they have gone.

“She walks among the loveliness she made,
Between the apple-blossom and the water”

She walks among the patterned pied brocade,
Each flower her son, and every tree her daughter.
"The Island", in Bulletin of the Garden Club of America (1929), p. 1, also in Collected Poems (1934), p. 54

“I have some weeks in which to steel
My heart and teach myself to feel
Only a sober tenderness
Where once was passion's loveliness.”

"And so it ends", a poem cited as probably directed to her sister-in-law, Gwen St. Aubyn, in V. Sackville-West : A Critical Biography (1974) by Michael Stevens, p. 91
Context: And so it ends,
We who were lovers may be friends.
I have some weeks in which to steel
My heart and teach myself to feel
Only a sober tenderness
Where once was passion's loveliness.

“I came from nowhere, and shall be
Strong, steadfast, swift, eternally”

"The Greater Cats"
Kings Daughter (1929)
Context: I came from nowhere, and shall be
Strong, steadfast, swift, eternally:
I am a lion, a stone, a tree,
And as the Polar star in me
Is fixed my constant heart on thee.
Ah, may I stay forever blind
With lions, tigers, leopards, and their kind.

“I shared with ships good joys and fortunes wide
That might befall their beauty and their pride”

"Sailing Ships", p. 162
Collected Poems (1933)
Context: While many a lovely ship below sailed by
On unknown errand, kempt and leisurely;
And after each, oh, after each, my heart
Fled forth, as, watching from the Downs apart,
I shared with ships good joys and fortunes wide
That might befall their beauty and their pride…

“It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.”

Twelve Days (1928) p. 9; part of this appears to have also become paraphrased in the form:
Context: It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? for the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind; how the observation of last year seems childish, superficial; how this year — even this week — even with this new phrase — it seems to us that we have grown to a new maturity. It may be a fallacious persuasion, but at least it is stimulating, and so long as it persists, one does not stagnate.
I look back as through a telescope, and see, in the little bright circle of the glass, moving flocks and ruined cities.

“The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
Deserts are there, and the different skies,
And night with different stars.”

"The Greater Cats"
Kings Daughter (1929)
Context: The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
Deserts are there, and the different skies,
And night with different stars.
They prowl the aromatic hill,
And mate as fiercely as they kill,
To roam, to live, to drink their fill;
But this beyond their wit know I:
Man loves a little, and for long shall die.

“But this beyond their wit know I:
Man loves a little, and for long shall die.”

"The Greater Cats"
Kings Daughter (1929)
Context: The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
Deserts are there, and the different skies,
And night with different stars.
They prowl the aromatic hill,
And mate as fiercely as they kill,
To roam, to live, to drink their fill;
But this beyond their wit know I:
Man loves a little, and for long shall die.

“It is incredible how essential to me you have become.”

Letter to Virginia Woolf (21 January 1926), quoted in Love Letters : A Romantic Treasury (1996) by Rick Smith, p. 78
Context: It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this — But oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don't love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don't really resent it.

“A man and his land make a man and his creed.”

"A Saxon Song" (1923)
Variant: A man and his loves make a man and his life.

“Women, like men, ought to have their years so glutted with freedom that they hate the very idea of freedom.”

Letter to her husband Harold Nicolson (1 June 1919); published in Harold and Vita (1992), by Nigel Nicolson, p. 89

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