Life & Wisdom Quote by Edith Sitwell

A self-portrait as a captive audience, delivered with the kind of aristocratic chill Edith Sitwell perfected. The line pivots on a delicious insult: “bore” isn’t just a type, it’s a predator, and Sitwell casts herself as the unfortunate ecosystem that lets it thrive. The joke is that boredom becomes “art” only when it’s performed at someone else. “Greatest flights” borrows the diction of heroism and high culture, then hands it to the most punishing conversationalists alive. That mismatch is the mechanism: inflated language used to puncture inflated people.

The specific intent feels double-edged. Sitwell isn’t simply complaining about tedious talkers; she’s diagnosing a social dynamic in which certain people attract monologues the way a lamplit porch attracts moths. “I am one of those” makes it sound like a doomed minority, a sad little caste of listeners marked by some fatal politeness, fame, or perceived leisure. Subtext: she knows her public persona - eccentric, upper-class, visibly “literary” - invites performance. Bores don’t want dialogue; they want a stage, and Sitwell’s presence becomes an endorsement.

Context matters: Sitwell moved through salons, press attention, and avant-garde circles where conversation was a currency and reputation a sport. Her poetry was famously stylized; here she applies that same stylization to social survival. The line reads like defense and weapon at once: a way to keep her dignity while admitting vulnerability. Wit becomes a border control policy. If you can’t stop the bore, at least you can name the transaction and keep the last word.