Osbert Sitwell Quotes

16 Sourced Quotes

In reality, killing time
Is only the name for another of the multifarious ways
By which Time kills us.

Osbert Sitwell
They loved him, I think, because, with all his merits, he showed them to be rich: looking at his portraits, they understood at last how rich they really were.

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

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

Osbert Sitwell
The British bourgeoisie
Is not born
And does not die,
But, if it is ill,
It has a frightened look in its eyes.

Osbert Sitwell
On the coast of Coromandel
Dance they to the tunes of Handel.

Osbert Sitwell
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
A word is the carving and coloring of a thought, and gives it permanence.

Osbert Sitwell
For Poetry is the wisdom of the blood,
That scarlet tree within, which has the power
To make dull words bud forth and burst in flower.

Osbert Sitwell
Heroic figures are now obsolete,
So Demigod and Devil find retreat
In minds of children — as rare beasts and men,
Elsewhere extinct, persist in hill or fen
From man protected — where each form assumes
Gigantic stature and intention, looms
From wind-moved, twilight-woven histories:
For them each flower teems with mysteries.

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

Osbert Sitwell
For forty days he went out into the desert - and never shot anything [on Jesus]

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

Osbert Sitwell
The terrible newly imported American doctrine that everyone ought to do something.

Osbert Sitwell