Stevie Smith Quotes

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.

I'll have your heart, if not by gift my knife Shall carve it out. I'll have your heart, your life.

If there wasn't death, I think you couldn't go on.

Youth is an arithmetical statement of passing interest, each hour eats it up.

Nothing is more wistful than the scent of lilac, nor more robust than its woody stalk, for we must remember that it is a tree as well as a flower, we must try not to forget this ...

It is an amiable part of human nature, that we should love our animals; it is even better to love them to the point of folly, than not to love them at all.

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.

And soon all our minds will be flat as a pancake,
With no room for genius exaltation or heartache.
And our children and theirs will preen, smirk and chatter,
With not even the sense to ask what is the matter.

Who is this that comes in grandeur, coming from the blazing East? This is he we had not thought of, this is he the airy Christ.

Love is not love that wounded bleeds And bleeding sullies slow. Come death within my hands and I Unto my love will go.

Fourteen-year-old, why must you giggle and dote,
Fourteen-year-old, why are you such a goat?
I'm fourteen years old, that is the reason,
I giggle and dote in season.

The Reason"

My life is vile
I hate it so
I'll wait awhile
And then I'll go.

Why wait at all?
Hope springs alive,
Good may befall
I yet may thrive.

It is because I can't make up my mind
If God is good, impotent or unkind.

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Some are born for peace and joy
Some are born for sorrow
But only for a day as we
Shall not be here tomorrow

I'm alive today, therefore I'm just as much a part of our time as everybody else. The times will just have to enlarge themselves to make room for me, won't they, and for everybody else.

My heart was full of softening showers,
I used to swing like this for hours,
I did not care for war or death,
I was glad to draw my breath.

Oh Lion in a peculiar guise,
Sharp Roman road to Paradise,
Come eat me up, I'll pay thy toll
With all my flesh, and keep my soul.

Why does my muse only speak when she is uhnhappy? She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy.

But one wants the idea of Death, you know, as something large and unknowable, something that allows a person to stretch himself out. Especially one wants it if one is tired. Or perhaps what one wants is simply a release from sensation, from all consciousness for ever ...

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.

The grass is green
The tulip is red
A ginger cat walks over
The pink almond petals on the flower bed.
Enough has been said to show
It is life we are taking about.

- Oh grateful colours; bright looks!

There is a god in whom I do not believe
Yet to this god my love stretches,
This god whom I do not believe in is
My whole life, my life and I am his.

Everything that I have of pleasure and pain
(Of pain, of bitter pain and men's contempt)
I give this god for him to feed upon
As he is my whole life and I am his.

When I am dead I hope that he will eat
Everything I have been and have not been
And crunch and feed upon it and grow fat
Eating my life all up as it is his.

- God the Eater

Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning. I was much further out than you thought, and not waving but drowning. I was much too far out all my life, And not waving but drowning.

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.

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

As Nature is always careless and indifferent
Who sees, who steps, means nothing and this is pretty.

There can be no good art that is international. Art to be vigorous and gesund must use the material at hand.

I made Man with too many faults. Yet I love him. And if he wishes, I have a home above for him.

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

This Englishwoman is so refined, She has no bosom and no behind.

Truth is far and flat, and fancy is fiery; and truth is cold, and people feel the cold, and they may wrap themselves against it in fancies that are fiery, but they should not call them facts; and, generally, poets do not; they are shrewd, they feel the cold, too, but they know a hawk from a handsaw, a fact from a fancy, as none knows better.

There are moments of despair that come sometimes, when night sets in and a white fog presses against the windows. Then our house changes its shape, rears up and becomes a place of despair. Then fear and rage run simply
and the thought of Death as a friend. This is the simplest of thoughts, that Death must come when we call, although he is a god.

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.

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

Death's not a separation or alternation or parting it's just a one-handled door"

- from "Mrs Simpkins

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.

Now when a people has dictators, that is a symptom that they are running mad. They should be watched. I think they should be watched very closely. And later they should be prevented. Now think it is not a nation but an individual, now see, this is like he had a disease.

God the Eater
There is a god in whom I do not believe
Yet to this god my love stretches,
This god whom I do not believe in is
My whole life, my life and I am his.
Everything that I have of pleasure and pain
(Of pain, of bitter pain and men's contempt)
I give this god for him to feed upon
As he is my whole life and I am his.
When I am dead I hope that he will eat
Everything I have been and have not been
And crunch and feed upon it and grow fat
Eating my life all up as it is his.

So I fancy my Muse says, when I wish to die, Oh no, Oh no, we are not yet friends enough, And Virtue also says: We are not yet friends enough.

Marriage I think
For women
Is the best of opiates.
It kills the thoughts
That think about the thoughts,
It is the best of opiates.
So said Maria.
But too long in solitude she'd dwelt,
And too long her thoughts had felt
Their strength. So when the man drew near,
Out popped her thoughts and covered him with fear.
Poor Maria!
Better that she had kept her thoughts on a chain,
For now she's alone again and all in pain;
She sighs for the man that went and the thoughts that stay
To trouble her dreams by night and her dreams by day.

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

A man may forgive many wrongs, but he cannot easily forgive anyone who makes it plain that his conversation is tedious.

The human creature is alone in his carapace. Poetry is a strong way out.

Prate not to me of suicide, Faint heart in battle, not for pride I say Endure, but that such end denied Makes welcomer yet the death that's to be died.

If I lie down on my bed I must be here,
But if I lie down in my grave I may be elsewhere.

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.

I am hungry to be interrupted
For ever and ever amen