T. S. Eliot Quotes
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No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job....Poetry..remains one person talking to another....no poet can write a poem of amplitude unless he is the master of the prosaic.
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Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.
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Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
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The soul of Man must quicken to creation.
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You are the music while the music lasts.
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It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London.
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This love is silent.
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Wavering between the profit and the loss In this brief transit where the dreams cross The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
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For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
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In spite of all the dishonour, the broken standards, the broken lives, The broken faith in one place or another, There was something left that was more than the tales Of old men on winter evenings.
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What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
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When the whole world is running headlong towards the precipice, one who walks in the opposite direction is looked at as being crazy.
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O Light Invisible, we praise Thee! Too bright for mortal vision.
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No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest- for it is a part of education to learn to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.
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What is that sound high in the air Murmur of maternal lamentation Who are those hooded hordes swarming Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth Ringed by the flat horizon only What is the city over the mountains Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air Falling towers Jerusalem Athens Alexandria Vienna London Unreal
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It is not the 'greatness,' the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts.
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Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger. Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.
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I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.
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What is this self-inside us, this silent observer, severe and speechless critic, who can terrorize us, and urge us onto futile activity, and in the end, judge us still more severely for the errors into which his own reproaches drove us?
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Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.
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The soul is so far from being a monad that we have not only to interpret other souls to ourself but to interpret ourself to ourself.
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No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;Am an attendant lord, one that will doTo swell a progress, start a scene or two,Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,Deferential, glad to be of use,Politic, cautious, and meticulous;Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;At times, indeed, almost ridiculous - Almost, at times, the Fool.
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Ash on an old man's sleeve / Is all the ash the burnt roses leave, / Dust in the air suspended / Marks the place where a story ended.
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I learn a great deal by merely observing you, and letting you talk as long as you please, and taking note of what you do not say.