Vita Sackville-West

“I came from nowhere, and shall be With lions, tigers, leopards, and their kind.”

“Leopards on the gable-ends, Leopards everywhere.”

“Often on the painted stair, Nothing there to see.”

“While many a lovely ship below sailed by That might befall their beauty and their pride…”

“Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt.”

“What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.”

“Women, like men, ought to have their years so glutted with freedom that they hate the very idea of freedom.”

“Of course I have no right whatsoever to write down the truth about my life involving as it naturally does the lives of so many other people, but I do so urged by a necessity of truth-telling, because there is no living soul who knows the complete truth; here, may be one who knows a section; and there, one who knows another section: but to the whole picture not one is initiated.”

“A man and his tools make a man and his trade.”

“A man and his land make a man and his creed.”

“A man and his loves make a man and his life.”

“The dusk is heavy with the wine's warm load; Here the sweet legends of the world remain.”

“Who could so watch, and not forget the rack And know himself for Rome's inheritor?”

“If I had only loved your flesh And little more to tell.”

“It is quite true that you have had infinitely more influence on me intellectually than anyone, and for this alone I love you.”

“She walks among the loveliness she made, Each flower her son, and every tree her daughter.”

“I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all.”

“And so it ends, Where once was passion's loveliness.”

“You took me weak and unprepared. But to accept your crazy creed.”

“Darling, I thought of nothing mean; To kill the body or destroy the soul?”

“Days I enjoy are days when nothing happens, To get myself back to myself when they have gone.”

“And what have I to give my friends in the last resort? And theirs presumably theirs, and cannot touch.”

“Yes, they were kind exceedingly; most mild Submissive to a law he does not understand.”

“Remembrance clamoured in him: 'She was wild and free, To gain or loss, and, loving, loved but me, — but me!”

“All her youth is gone, her beautiful youth outworn, Where she was wont to roam.”

“All her lovers have passed, her beautiful lovers have passed, Is the voice of the lonely land.”

“I sing the cycle of my country's year, Was born immediate, of expediency.”

“The country habit has me by the heart, Stoops like the merlin to the constant lure.”

“Forget not bees in winter, though they sleep.”

“In February, if the days be clear, And blunder out to seek another spring.”

“All craftsmen share a knowledge. They have heldReality down fluttering to a bench.”

“I saw within the wheelwright’s shed The brace, the adze, the awl;”

“The young men strained upon the crank And threw their loins across the winch.”

“The greater cats with golden eyes Man loves a little, and for long shall die.”

“Their strength's eternal in their sight, Man's love is transient as his death is long.”