T. S. Eliot Quotes
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Whatever you think, be sure it is what you think; whatever you want, be sure that is what you want; whatever you feel, be sure that is what you feel.
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And all shall be well and/ All manner of thing shall be well/ By the purification of the motive/ In the ground of our beseeching
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As a rule, with me an unfinished [idea] is a thing that might as well be rubbed out. It's better, if there's something good in it that I might make use of elsewhere, to leave it at the back of my mind than on paper in a drawer. If I leave it in a drawer it remains the same thing but if it's in the memory it becomes transformed into something else.
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The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven, The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
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For every life and every act consequence of good and evil can be shown and as in time results of many deeds are blended so good and evil in the end become confounded.
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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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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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Stand on the highest pavement of the stair- Lean on a garden urn- Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
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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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Everyone's alone - or so it seems to me. They make noises, and think they are talking to each other; They make faces, and think they understand each other. And I'm sure they don't. Is that a delusion?
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Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of self.
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Gradually we come to admit that Shakespeare understands a greater extent and variety of human life than Dante; but that Dante understands deeper degrees of degradation and higher degrees of exaltation.
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What life have you, if you have not life together? There is not life that is not in community, And no community not lived in praise of GOD.
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In the room the women come and goTalking of Michelangelo.
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When the gods know that a god hath fallen, With this kindly feeling They do encourage him-- Be thou a god again and again.
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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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Some one said: 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they are that which we know.
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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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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 tendency of liberals is to create bodies of men and women-of all classes-detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion-mob rule. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined.
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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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It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the 'dear deceit' of beauty.
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They don't understand what it is to be awake, / To be living on several planes at once / Though one cannot speak with several voices at once.