Eccentricity is not, as some would believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.
Edith SitwellThe trouble about most Englishwomen is that they will dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous incarnation, or hope to be one in the next.
Edith SitwellMy temper is not spoilt. I am absolutely non-homicidal. Nor do I ever attack unless I have been attacked first, and then Heaven have mercy upon the attacker, because I don't! I just sharpen my wits on a wooden head as a cat sharpens its claws on the wood legs of a table.
Edith SitwellIn the Augustan age ... poetry was ... the sister of architecture; with the romantics, and their heightened vowel-sense, resulting in different melodic lines, she became the sister of music; in the present day, she appears like the sister of horticulture, each poem growing according to the law of its own nature.
Edith Sitwell