T. S. Eliot Quotes
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The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is incarnation. Here the impossible union of spheres of existence is actual. Here the past and future are conquered and reconciled.
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We are the hollow menWe are the stuffed menLeaning togetherHeadpiece filled with straw.
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The difference between being an elder statesman And posing successfully as an elder statesman Is practically negligible.
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But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.
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The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven, The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
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There are flood and drought over the eyes and in the mouth, dead water and dead sand contending for the upper hand. The parched eviscerate soil gapes at the vanity of toil, laughs without mirth. This is the death of the earth.
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At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is.
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Every nation, every race, has not only its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind; and is even more oblivious of the shortcomings and limitations of its critical habits than of those of its creative genius.
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To country people Cows are mild, And flee from any stick they throw; But I’m a timid town bred child, And all the cattle seem to know.
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The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief.
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The overwhelming pressure of mediocrity, sluggish and indomitable as a glacier, will mitigate the most violent, and depress the most exalted revolution.
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The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.
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Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore.
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I do not believe that any writer has ever exposed this bovarysme, the human will to see things as they are not, more clearly than Shakespeare.
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A penny for the Old Guy
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It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry -That is a life.
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I was neitherLiving nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
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That was my way of putting it-not very satisfactory: A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle With words and meanings.
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Let these words answer For what is done, not to be done again May the judgement not be too heavy upon us
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Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden, Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood Teach us to care and not to care
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To each individual the world will take on a different connotation of meaning-the important lies in the desire to search for an answer.
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When comparing works of art, it is important that the art itself, and not the artists, be considered.
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Composing on the typewriter, I find that I am sloughing off all my long sentences which I used to dote upon. Short, staccato, like modern French prose. The typewriter makes for lucidity, but I am not sure that it encourages subtlety.
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And we all say: OH! Well I never! Was there ever A Cat so clever As Magical Mr. Mistoffelees!