Edith Sitwell

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

I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent.
– Edith Sitwell

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.
– Edith Sitwell

Poetry is the deification of reality.
– Edith Sitwell

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

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?
– Edith Sitwell

My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
– Edith Sitwell

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

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.
– Edith Sitwell

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

I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty… but I am too busy thinking about
myself.
– Edith Sitwell

I am resigned to the fact that people who don’t know me loathe me. Perhaps it is because I
am a woman writing poetry. It must be annoying to a man who wants to write to see this
horrid old lady who can.
– Edith Sitwell

I wouldn’t dream of following a fashion – how could one be a different person every three
months?
– Edith Sitwell

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

My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life.
– Edith Sitwell

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.
– Edith Sitwell

I am one of those unhappy persons who inspire bores to the greatest flights of art.
– Edith Sitwell

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.
– Edith Sitwell

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.
– Edith Sitwell

It is a part of the poet’s work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees.
– Edith Sitwell

Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.
– Edith Sitwell

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.
– Edith Sitwell