Vita Sackville-West Quotes

I have to admit: I have been known to be obsessively neat and like things arranged 'just so.'

Tidiness is a virtue, symmetry is often a constituent of beauty.

I don't function well in chaos, whether it be my sheets or the dishwasher.

Order is the shape upon which beauty depends.

There's design, and there's art. Good design is total harmony. There's no better designer than nature - if you look at a branch or a leaf, it's perfect. It's all function. Art is different. It's about emotion. It's about suffering and beauty - but mostly suffering!

A place for everything, everything in its place.

Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.

We adore chaos because we love to produce order.

My filing system is messy but orderly.

So every creative act strives to attain an absolute status; it longs to create a world of beauty to triumph over chaos and convert it to order.

I like it when things are where they're supposed to be.

I can't stand things being out of place.

I don't like to see mess.

I'm a tidy sort of bloke. I don't like chaos. I kept records in the record rack, tea in the tea caddy, and pot in the pot box.

Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

I cannot function if there is a physical mess around me. If everything is falling apart, I go on a cleaning frenzy.

There's nothing quite as irksome as someone else's mess.

Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.

Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation.

Order and disorder', said the speaker, 'they each have their beauty.

The essence of taste is suitability. Divest the word of its prim and priggish implications, and see how it expresses the mysterious demand of the eye and mind for symmetry, harmony and order.

What?" "You're so neat," she said, looking almost embarrassed. He glanced pointedly over his shoulder. "There are four hundred on the other side of this door." "But you're ruining me." "I can't do it neatly?

There is no beauty without order.

Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

There are few things more pleasing than the contemplation of order and useful arrangement.