Ethel Smyth Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

The charms of seclusion are seldom combined with the conveniences of civilization.

Ethel Smyth
When I came to know Greek art I instantly understood that excess and perfection are enemies; yet on the other hand this world and the millions of worlds around us live by fire... !

Ethel Smyth
If some people are right, artists are put into this world not to practice their art, but to talk about it. And judging by the flattering invitations many a humble climber will receive to pontificate from the lowest rung but one of the ladder, humanity is in a dangerously receptive frame of mind, and artists a race devoid of either modesty or sense of humor.

Ethel Smyth
If you take passionate interest in a subject, it is hard not to believe yourself specially equipped for it.

Ethel Smyth
As the great Brahms recently proclaimed:
'A clever woman is a thing of naught!'
So let us diligently cultivate stupidity,
That being the only quality demanded
Of a female Brahms-admirer!

Ethel Smyth
Her secret feeling was, I expect, that of many anti-suffragist women I have known, who, for some reason or other on the pinnacle of man's favor themselves, had no objection to the rest of womenkind being held in contempt.

Ethel Smyth
If a young dog strays up the aisle during church no one says anything, no one does anything, but, none the less, he soon becomes aware that something is wrong. Even so, as the distance between myself and the hearthrug diminished, did I become aware that something was very wrong indeed.

Ethel Smyth
I have often noticed that when Fate has a phenomenal run of ill luck in store for you, she begins by dropping a rare piece of good fortune into your lap, thereby enhancing the artistic effect of the sequel.

Ethel Smyth
The majority of critical, and plenty of uncritical, readers find quotations a bore.

Ethel Smyth
I can imagine nothing more tiresome than always to speak of people as if they were listening at the door.

Ethel Smyth
Night after night I went to sleep murmuring, Tomorrow I will be easy, strong, quick, supple, accurate, dashing and self-controlled all at once! For not less than this is necessary in the Game of Life called golf.

Ethel Smyth
No doubt other writers have often put a thing more brilliantly, more subtly than even a very cunning artist in words can hope to emulate, a supreme phrase being a bit of luck that only happens now and then. And inasmuch as the condiments and secret travail of human nature are always the same, and that certain psychological moments must ever and ever recur, what more tempting than to pin down such a moment with the blow of a borrowed hammer?

Ethel Smyth
She had accomplished what according to builders is only possible to wood and stone of the very finest grain; she had weathered, as they call it, with beauty.

Ethel Smyth
The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behooves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c'est l homme, what is likely to happen if l homme is for ever eking out his own personality with that of some other individual?

Ethel Smyth
No one is more trustworthy than the repentant sinner who has been found out.

Ethel Smyth