Top 40 Stevie Smith Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The sea was angry that day my friend, like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli.”

— Stevie Smith

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

— Stevie Smith

3. “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

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

— Stevie Smith

5. “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.”

— Stevie Smith

6. “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

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

— Stevie Smith

8. “Colours are what drive me most strongly.”

— Stevie Smith

9. “O happy dogs of England, Bark well at errand boys, If you lived anywhere else, You would not be allowed to make such an infernal noise.”

— Stevie Smith

10. “Life may be treacherous, but you can always depend on death.”

— Stevie Smith

11. “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.”

— Stevie Smith

12. “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 stay with the girls who are happy and fat.”

— Stevie Smith

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

— Stevie Smith

14. “I only asked my friends to be friendly and polite, I found them indifferent and censorious; The one I left to silence, the other to reproach: God send me over all such friends victorious.”

— Stevie Smith

15. “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

16. “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.”

— Stevie Smith

17. “I like to see cats in movement. A galloping cat is a fine sight. See it cross the road in a streak, cursed by the drivers of motor cars and buses, dodging the butcher’s bicycle, coming safe to the kerb and bellying under its home gate.”

— Stevie Smith

18. “I’ll have your heart, if not by gift my knife Shall carve it out. I’ll have your heart, your life.”

— Stevie Smith

19. “The flower and fruit of love are mine The ant, the fieldmouse and the mole.”

— Stevie Smith

20. “This is the simplest of all thoughts, that Death must come when we call, although he is a god.”

— Stevie Smith

21. “My Muse sits forlorn She wishes she had not been born She sits in the cold No word she says is ever told.”

— Stevie Smith

22. “Death’s not a separation or alteration or parting; it’s just a one-handled door.”

— Stevie Smith

23. “All poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will also be another poet.”

— Stevie Smith

24. “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.”

— Stevie Smith

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

— Stevie Smith

26. “I am a forward-looking girl and don’t stay where I am. “Left right, Be bright,” as I said in my poem. That’s on days when I am one big bounce, and have to go careful then not to be a nuisance. But later I get back to my own philosophical outlook that keeps us all kissable.”

— Stevie Smith

27. “If there wasn’t death, I think you couldn’t go on.”

— Stevie Smith

28. “If a lady comes up to you and tells you that your dear mama is lying in a faint on the pavement round the corner, don’t you believe her, don’t have anything to do with her, do not go with her into the cab. It is the White Slave Traffic.”

— Stevie Smith

29. “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.”

— Stevie Smith

30. “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 the people to bathe in me especially women.”

— Stevie Smith

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

— Stevie Smith

32. “See the cat at love, rolling with its sweetheart, up and over, with shriek and moan. But if a person comes by, they break away, sit separate upon a fence washing their faces – and might never have met at all.”

— Stevie Smith

33. “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.”

— Stevie Smith

34. “I love people, but I love the thought and memory of them just as much.”

— Stevie Smith

35. “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

36. “Christianity in the suburb is cheerful. The church is a centre of social activity and those who go to church need never be lonely.”

— Stevie Smith

37. “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.”

— Stevie Smith

38. “You must have some money if you are going to live simply. It need not be much, but you must have some.”

— Stevie Smith

39. “I don’t think Auden liked my poetry very much, he’s very Anglican.”

— Stevie Smith

40. “I like food, I like stripping vegetables of their skins, I like to have a slim young parsnip under my knife.”

— Stevie Smith

41. “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...”

— Stevie Smith

42. “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

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

— Stevie Smith

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

— Stevie Smith

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

— Stevie Smith

46. “We carry our own wilderness with us.”

— Stevie Smith

47. “But oh how sure I am that it is so much better to have love with all its pains and terrors and fanaticism than to live untouched the life of the vegetable. But how it tears one, and how unruhig it is.”

— Stevie Smith