Stevie Smith Quotes

54 Sourced Quotes

Cry pretty, pretty, pretty and you'll be able
Very soon not even to cry pretty
And so be delivered entirely from humanity
This is prettiest of all, it is very pretty.

Stevie Smith
Coleridge received the Person from Porlock
And ever after called him a curse,
Then why did he hurry to let him in?
He could have hid in the house.

Stevie Smith
He wrote The I and the It
He wrote The It and Me
He died at Marienbad
And now we are all at sea.

Stevie Smith
To choose a god of love, as he did and does,
Is a little move then?

Yes, it is.

A larger one will be when men
Love love and hate hate but do not deify them?

It will be a larger one.

Stevie Smith
Beware the man whose mouth is small
For he'll give nothing and take all.

Stevie Smith
I'm sorry to say my dear wife is a dreamer,
And as she dreams she gets paler and leaner.
'Then be off to your Dream, with his fly-away hat,
I'll stay with the girls who are happy and fat.'

Stevie Smith
Why does my Muse only speak when she is unhappy?
She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy
When I am happy I live and despise writing
For my Muse this cannot but be dispiriting.

Stevie Smith
In his fur the animal rode, and in his fur he strove,
And oh it filled my heart my heart, it filled my heart with love.

Stevie Smith
The religion of Christianity
Is mixed of sweetness and cruelty
Reject this Sweetness, for she wears
A smoky dress out of hell fires.

Stevie Smith
People who are always praising the past
And especially the times of faith as best
Ought to go and live in the Middle Ages
And be burnt at the stake as witches and sages.

Stevie Smith
Sin recognized - but that - may keep us humble,
But oh, it keeps us nasty.

Stevie Smith
I may be smelly, and I may be old,
Rough in my pebbles, reedy in my pools,
But where my fish float by I bless their swimming
And I like people to bathe in me, especially women.

Stevie Smith
I am not a cold woman, Henry,
But I do not feel for you,
What I feel for the elephants and the miasmas
And the general view.

Stevie Smith
Nobody writes or wishes to
Who is one with their desire.

Stevie Smith
All tamed animals are nervous, we have given them reason to be, not only by cruelty but by our love too, that presses upon them. They have not been able to be entirely indifferent to this and untouched by it.

Stevie Smith
The flower and fruit of love are mine
The ant, the fieldmouse and the mole

Stevie Smith
I love Life,
I would fight to the death for it,
That's a feeling you say? I will find
A reason for it.

Stevie Smith
My friendships, they are a very strong part of my life, they are as light as gossamer but also they are as strong as steel. And I cannot throw them off, nor altogether do with them or without them. And I love them at the point where they say: It is nice to see you again. And I love them too at the point when they say: Good-bye, come again soon. The rhythm of friendship is a very good rhythm.

Stevie Smith
Into the dark night Resignedly I go, I am not so afraid of the dark night As the friends I do not know, I do not fear the night above As I fear the friends below.

Stevie Smith
It is the privilege of the rich To waste the time of the poor To water with tears in secret A tree that grows in secret That bears fruit in secret That ripened falls to the ground in secret And manures the parent tree Oh the wicked tree of hatred and the secret The sap rising and the tears falling.

Stevie Smith
Oh these illegitimate babies!
Oh girls, girls,
Silly little valuable things,
You should have said, No, I am valuable,
And again, It is because I am valuable
I say, No.

Stevie Smith
If you cannot have your dear husband for a comfort and a delight, for a breadwinner and a crosspatch, for a sofa, chair or a hot-water bottle, one can use him as a Cross to be Borne.

Stevie Smith
The world is come upon me, I used to keep it a long way off, But now I have been run over and I am in the hands of the hospital staff.

Stevie Smith
I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant,
Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting
To the purpose of One Above who is experimenting
With various mixtures of human character which goes best,
All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us.
There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to do
Then you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go.

Stevie Smith
Unpopular, lonely and loving, Elinor need not trouble, For if she were not so loving, She would not be so miserable.

Stevie Smith