Osbert Sitwell Quotes

#1. The terrible newly imported American doctrine that everyone ought to do something.

Osbert Sitwell

#2. For Poetry is the wisdom of the blood,That scarlet tree within, which has the powerTo make dull words bud forth and burst in flower.

Osbert Sitwell

#3. I picked out a question with care. You have to be careful with strangers; questions can reveal as much as answers -Eve

Michele Jaffe

#4. Blood is that fragile scarlet tree we carry within us.

Osbert Sitwell

#5. The Rich Man's Banquet, which was to last for a decade, had now begun: the feast, it was recognised, went to the greediest.

Osbert Sitwell

#6. For forty days he went out into the desert - and never shot anything [on Jesus]

Osbert Sitwell

#7. Everywhere men have unlocked the prisoners within, and from under the disguising skins the apes have leapt joyfully out.

Osbert Sitwell

#8. Trust in your shadow; and you will find answers to all your questions.

Kristian Goldmund Aumann

#9. A golf course outside a big town serves an excellent purpose in that it segregates, as though a concentration camp, all the idle and idiot well-to-do.

Osbert Sitwell

#10. She gave me for my pains a world of sighs.

William Shakespeare

#11. Ordinary exploration begins in the juiciest sort of indecision, in deliberate, then routine fits of absence of mind... Exploring requires the cloak of invisibility bicyclists and walkers take for granted.

John R. Stilgoe

#12. My education [takes place] during the holidays from Eton.

Osbert Sitwell

#13. It is fatal to be appreciated in one's own time.

Osbert Sitwell

#14. In reality, killing time is only the name for another of the multifarious ways by which Time kills us.

Osbert Sitwell

#15. The artist, like the idiot or clown, sits on the edge of the world, and a push may send him over it.

Osbert Sitwell

#16. I have always said that if I were a rich man, I would employ a professional praiser.

Osbert Sitwell

#17. We attended stables, as we attended church, in our best clothes, thereby no doubt showing the degree of respect due to horses.

Osbert Sitwell

#18. How simple-minded of the Germans to imagine that we British could be cowed by the destruction of our ancient monuments! As though any havoc of the German bombs could possibly equal the things we have done ourselves!

Osbert Sitwell

#19. I took group lessons at a rink near my home. We first had to learn how to stand up on the ice wearing skates. Eventually we learned to move forward, but soon found out that it was not that easy to stop! So that was our next important lesson.

Nancy Kerrigan

#20. Hell has a climate, but no situation. It lies in the spirit, and not in space.

Osbert Sitwell

#21. I cook anything but chitlins.

Trick Daddy

#22. The only difference between an artist and a lunatic is, perhaps, that the artist has the restraint or courtesy to conceal the intensity of his obsession from all except those similarly afflicted.

Osbert Sitwell

#23. Poetry is like fish: if it's fresh, it's good; if it's stale, it's bad; and if you're not certain, try it on the cat.

Osbert Sitwell