If some people are right, artists are put into this world not to practice their art, but to talk about it. And judging by the flattering invitations many a humble climber will receive to pontificate from the lowest rung but… — Ethel Smyth Copy Share Image
if you take passionate interest in a subject, it is hard not to believe yourself specially equipped for it. — Ethel Smyth Copy Share Image
No doubt other writers have often put a thing more brilliantly, more subtly than even a very cunning artist in words can hope to emulate, a supreme phrase being a bit of luck that only happens now and then. And inasmuch as the condiments and secret travail of human nature are always the same, and that certain psychological moments must… — Ethel Smyth Copy Share
If some people are right, artists are put into this world not to practice their art, but to talk about it. And judging by… — Ethel Smyth Copy Share Image
The habit some writers indulge in of perpetual quotation is one it behooves lovers of good literature to protest against, for it is an insidious habit which in the end must cloud the stream of thought, or at least check spontaneity. If it be true that le style c'est l homme, what is likely to happen if l homme is… — Ethel Smyth Copy Share
Because I have conducted my own operas and love sheep-dogs; because I generally dress in tweeds, and sometimes, at winter afternoon concerts, have even conducted in them; because I was a militant suffragette and seized a chance of beating time to The March of the Women from the window of my cell in Holloway Prison with a tooth-brush; because I… — Ethel Smyth Copy Share
If a young dog strays up the aisle during church no one says anything, no one does anything, but, none the less, he soon… — Ethel Smyth Copy Share Image
I have often noticed that when Fate has a phenomenal run of ill luck in store for you, she begins by dropping a rare… — Ethel Smyth Copy Share Image
I loved dancing with a delirious 'I wish I could die' passion, especially when the music appealed to me ... but alas! only one in ten partners had any notion of time, and what made it worse, the nine were always behind, never before the beat. ... Sometimes I would firmly seize smaller, lighter partners by the scruff of the… — Ethel Smyth Copy Share
I can imagine nothing more tiresome than always to speak of people as if they were listening at the door. — Ethel Smyth Copy Share Image
night after night I went to sleep murmuring, 'To-morrow I will be easy, strong, quick, supple, accurate, dashing and self-controlled all at once!' For… — Ethel Smyth Copy Share Image
no one is more trustworthy than the repentant sinner who has been found out. — Ethel Smyth Copy Share Image
the majority of critical, and plenty of uncritical, readers find quotations a bore. — Ethel Smyth Copy Share Image
