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Stevie Smith Quotes

1902–1971 England

Stevie Smith (born Florence Margaret Smith; 20 September 1902 – 7 March 1971) was an English poet and novelist.

England
Novelists
Poets

Also known as: Smith, Stevie

Random Stevie Smith quote

15 quotes

All things pass
Love and mankind is grass.

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

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.

Selected Poems (1962)

Was he married, did he try
To support as he grew less fond of them
Wife and family?

Selected Poems (1962)

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

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

Selected Poems (1962)

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

Selected Poems (1962)

All the same, there is a difficulty. I should like him to be happy in heaven here,
But he cannot come by wishing. Only by being already at home here.

Selected Poems (1962)

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

Selected Poems (1962)

The boat that took my love away
He sent again to me
To tell me that he would not sleep
Alone beneath the sea.

Selected Poems (1962)

He did not love in the human way.

Selected Poems (1962)

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

Selected Poems (1962)

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.

Selected Poems (1962)

No man has seen her, this pitiful ghost,
And no woman either, but heard her at most,
Sighing and tapping and sighing again,
You have weaned me too soon, you must nurse me again.

Selected Poems (1962)

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.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Stevie Smith (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.