Edith Sitwell

What a guy, what a fool am I, to think my breaking heart could kid the moon.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.

Here I am alive, and it’s not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

The people change, the common denominator is you.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.

I don’t believe in geniuses, I believe in hard work.

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

Stand up and walk out of your history.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.