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

(Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), British poet, critic. Taken Care Of, ch. 19 (1965).)

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.

(Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), British poet, critic. Taken Care Of, ch. 15 (1965).)

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.

(Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), British writer, poet. Still Falls the Rain: The Raids, 1940. Night and Dawn.)

The last faint spark
In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending
dark,
The wounds of the baited bear,?
The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
On his helpless flesh . . . the tears of the hunted hare.

(Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), British poet. Still Falls the Rain (l. 22-27). . . Norton Anthology of English Literature, The, Vols. I-II. M. H. Abrams, general ed. (5th ed., 1986) W. W. Norton & Company.)

Jane, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again;

(Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), British poet. Jane, Jane,/ Tall as a crane (l. 1-3). . . Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, eds. (2d ed., 1988) W. W. Norton & Company.)

The light would show (if it could harden)
Eternities of kitchen garden,

(Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), British poet. Jane, Jane,/ Tall as a crane (l. 14-15). . . Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, eds. (2d ed., 1988) W. W. Norton & Company.)

Our hearts seemed safe in our breasts and sang to the
Light?
The marrow in the bone
We dreamed was safe . . . the blood in the veins, the
sap in the tree
Were springs of Deity.

(Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), British poet. Poems of the Atomic Bomb; Dirge for the New Sunrise (l. 20-24). . . Modern British Poetry. Louis Untermeyer, ed. (7th rev. ed., 1962) Harcourt, Brace and Company.)

Enhances the chances to bless with a benison
Alfred Lord Tennyson crossing the barlaid
With cold vegetation from pale deputations
Of temperance workers (all signed In Memoriam)

(Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), British poet. Sir Beelzebub. . . Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse, The. Philip Larkin, ed. (1973) Oxford University Press.)

In a borealic iceberg came Victoria; she
Knew Prince Albert's tall memorial took the colours of the floreal
And the borealic iceberg;

(Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), British poet. Sailors Come. . . Oxford Anthology of English Literature, The, Vols. I-II. Frank Kermode and John Hollander, general eds. (1973) Oxford University Press (Also published as six paperback vols.: Medieval English Literature, J. B. Trapp, ed.; The Literature of Renaissance England, John Hollander and Frank Kermode, eds.; The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, Martin Price, ed.; Romantic Poetry and Prose, Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling, eds.; Victorian Prose and Poetry, Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom, eds.; Modern British Literature, Frank Kermode and John Hollander, eds.).)

I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty.... But I am too busy thinking about myself.

(Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), British poet. Quoted in Observer (London, April 30, 1950).)